Barely There
by L0C
Summary: Harper and Tyr crash land on a backwards planet. Gen. Slash. Het. Fun for the whole family. 7/? Now Beta'd.
1. Chapter 1

This is AU.  
  
Barely There  
  
Chapter One  
  
Oh, god, why the hell couldn't he remember anything?  
  
He could see plenty of it- bright lights, smoke, fireworks, a laser show gone wrong. He remembered wine and beer and Perseid Vodka and Makran Absinthe. Weed. Acid. Mush. Girls. Boys. Other people. Too much of everything in a bad combination.  
  
And then came the lectures, and the sickness, and the rampaging headaches and falling asleep on the floor of the Maru, and Beka's disgusted 'pfft' as she left him there.  
  
But...what?  
  
Once his face made contact with the Maru's floor he should've been safe. But the loud noises and the blossoming lights in the back of his head didn't stop, and he felt rough hands around his waist, and yelling, and confusion and...what happened then?  
  
Harper's ragged, red eyes cracked open and he regretted doing it. He rolled over in the pristine white sheets he was lying in, naked. He was hot, he was burning up. It felt like there was a party in his mouth and everyone was throwing up. He wished very hard that he was behind a couch in a dark corner in the obs deck, instead of lying on blinding white sheets in a blinding white room, with a small, curtainless window open and breezy.  
  
Harper rolled over and buried his head and felt like crying a little, too hurt and sick to do anything else, really.  
  
You brought it on yourself, you dumbass the same self-censoring tirade that he subjected himself to since he first started drinking at twelve. He cringed and coughed a bit, and managed to open his eyes enough to look for some water.  
  
There wasn't any at hand. He was on a low, billowy pallet in the room, which was small, clean, and white. He was alone. The rest of the room was bare. Harper felt a shiver go up his bare back and pulled the breezy sheets over himself a bit more. He was too sick and tired to feel scared.  
  
What happened?  
  
He lay back down, staring up at the rooftop, wondering if he had finally gone insane and been committed. That would make sense. He was *really* fucked up that night. Probably ruined the whole state affair- wait, no, Dylan had let him go planetside to spend the weekend, he didn't have any diplomatic duties this time.  
  
Harper narrowed his red eyes. When did he get back to the Maru? Had Beka come looking for him? He was going to spend the night in a hostel.  
  
Where was he now?  
  
Oh, crap. He had to pee.  
  
Harper glanced around the room once more, still finding it bare. He barely saw the outline of the door in the white wall. He sighed and closed his eyes again, resigning himself to a long wait.  
  
After a while he realized he could hear the crash of waves outside the window. That calmed him a bit. He smiled. Then he realized he had to pee more.  
  
Just then, the door creaked open with frightening subtletly. Harper's eyes flew open and he pressed himself up into the corner. Tyr was standing there, dressed in black, taking up most of the doorway. He looked at Harper softly.  
  
"Tyr," Harper breathed, relieved. He was surprised at how horrible and small his voice sounded. He rubbed at his throat miserably. Tyr didn't answer. "Why...why can't I remember anything?" Harper asked. Harper didn't know if Nietszcheans could have broken hearts, but that's what it seemed like Tyr was suffering from, judging from the look on his face.  
  
"Tyr?" Harper's high, scratchy voice cracked a bit more and he coughed, the sand papery, horrible sort of cough you get when the front of your throat sticks to the back.  
  
Tyr visibly winced and he came into the room, holding a large glass of water.  
  
"What happened?" Harper could barely hear himself. Tyr didn't answer him.  
  
"Drink," the big Nietzschean commanded, and Harper looked at him through reddened puffy eyes before obeying. He drank greedily, and emptied the glass before Tyr took it away again.  
  
"What happened?" He asked again. When Tyr didn't answer a second time, instead busied himself untangling Harper's skinny legs from the wrapped up sheets, he panicked a little. "Oh, god, I fucked things up, didn't I? I know I should've stayed away from the drugs, I know I've promised that before. I didn't think I'd go back home so early. It wasn't like I was on Flash or anyth-"  
  
"It's not that," Tyr cut him short.  
  
"I did something stupid, didn't I?" Harper's voice was still scratchy and high. It was barely there. "I played some prank, or-"  
  
"Be quiet," Tyr said, and his voice sounded a little weary, but he finished what he was doing with the sheets and turned away. "You did nothing."  
  
"Where are we?"  
  
"With friends."  
  
Harper furrowed his brow. What a cryptic response. What a fucking convoluted, snakey, non-Tyr response. "What?"  
  
"We crashed."  
  
"Crashed? Where? The Andromeda crashed?" He was panicking again.  
  
"No. The Maru crashed."  
  
This confused Harper even more. He was sick and tired and he had to pee. He didn't want to have to put up with this shit. "What?" He squeaked. "What happened to the Andromeda?"  
  
"The Ship..." Tyr trailed off, still looking away. "I'll tell you when you're feeling better."  
  
"What?" Harper glared up at Tyr, who was resolutley not looking at him. "Tyr, what are you...what are you telling me?" Harper's already ghostly voice dropped several decibals. His face looked crestfallen. "Are you...are you serious?"  
  
Tyr looked at Harper this time, his deep brown eyes troubled, as if he saw something in Harper that disturbed him.  
  
"Oh, god," Harper's voice sounded like it had years ago, when he was a child. He felt much the same way. His skinny, starving, sickened body started convulsing, and tears welled up. Tyr stood there looking like he didn't know what to do. "You're not...you're kidding!"  
  
"I'll tell you when you're feeling better," Tyr said softly. He moved a little closer to Harper, who was sobbing in earnest, his spindly hands covering his sallow face. "Boy..." Tyr said softly, his own voice threatening to break. He sighed and covered his own face with one big hand.  
  
"Why..." Harper barely said, and he didn't expect a response. He wiped his face, his reddened eyes, and through the tears that kept coming he pretended he was okay. "Tyr, am I sick?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Very sick?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"With what?"  
  
Tyr hesitated. "We don't know yet."  
  
"Who's we?"  
  
Tyr knelt down this time, draping sheets around Harper's shaking, diseased frame, trying not to show his inbred disgust at having to touch something so sickly and weak. "I'll tell you when you're feeling better."  
  
Harper looked up at him and started crying again.  
  
"Stop that," Tyr wiped roughly at Harper's bruised, sunken face.  
  
"Fuck off!" Harper drew back harshly. Tyr still had a grip on the sheets that were cocooned around Harper, however, and he pulled him closer, still sobbing.  
  
"Listen to me, child," Tyr said, unusually soft. "We're not going to feel sorry for ourselves. We survived. Where's there's life, there's-"  
  
"Fuck off!" Harper's voice whispered, choking, harshly. His throat closed up and he gasped, startled, panicking for air.  
  
Tyr sighed, and looked like he was trying very hard to not look worried. He gently lay Harper back down on the bed, and sat with him until the panic subsided and Harper could breathe the way he was before, which still wasn't very well.  
  
"Tyr?" Harper said after a moment's pause.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"I hafta go pee." His voice was low. Tyr sighed, and slowly, carefully, helped Harper to his feet. Harper almost fell immediately, and Tyr caught him on one arm. He looked down at himself and almost cried again at what he saw- he had lost more weight than he could imagine loosing, his little, bony feet skipped painfully in front of him, a painful parody of walking, as Tyr was mostly holding him up.  
  
He let out a tiny, pained whimper, and Tyr said: "Boy, stop that", and he knew that Tyr didn't mean the noise but that he meant feeling defeated.  
  
Tyr brought him out to the hallway, which was just as bare and white, and stretched on in both directions forever. No one was there. There were wide open windows overlooking a courtyard; they were in a low, stucco white villa. Harper couldn't see the ocean from this view but he could hear it and that made him feel, somewhat, better. Brilliant green trees of unusual leafy shapes grew up in the courtyard. It was deserted.  
  
"Where is everyone?" Harper asked, trying to get his mind off the travesty of a body that he had just seen as his own.  
  
"Prayers," Tyr said, disdain evident in his voice.  
  
"What planet are we on?"  
  
Tyr paused. "Our hosts don't...really think of planets the way we do." He said.  
  
Tyr took Harper to an urn, a red urn that stood up in one corner in the breezy corridor. Harper stood in front of it, staring down at his emaciated, bruised up little body. Tyr turned around and Harper was glad, even though he could've sworn the older man was suppressing disgust.  
  
Harper leaned his aching head against the stucco white wall in front of him, and hissed as his loins burned and stabbed as he relieved himself.  
  
"Does it hurt?" He heard Tyr asked, and could've sworn the man sounded worried.  
  
"Yes, goddammit!" Harper cried, and didn't tell Tyr that he saw blood.  
  
"Don't curse at me," Tyr almost growled, and Harper rolled his reddened eyes.  
  
"Oh, what the fuck..." He trailed off as another pang of hurt exploded in the back of his head, and rested his forehead wearily again on the white stucco wall. He closed his eyes against reality and felt himself closing up again, convulsing.  
  
"Are you going to faint, boy?" Tyr's voice seemed very far away. Harper shook his head defiantly. He willed his eyes open again and stared at the whiteness in front of him, and all of a sudden the grief, the not knowing, the utter loneliness overwhelmed him and a few tears fell from his red and jaundiced eyes.  
  
He was done, apparently, and Tyr wrapped the sheets around him again. Harper covered his sallow face defiantly again, not willing to let the big Nietzschean see his weakness.  
  
The shaking of his weak, sickly shoulders gave it away though. Tyr sighed, and Harper felt big arms, reluctantly, move around his skinny frame.  
  
He buried his face into the other man's expansive chest, but he didn't let himself sob. He barely acknowledged the fact that Tyr was holding him at all- pride got in the way.  
  
He felt a deep breath move through Tyr's body and wiped ineffectually at his bruised face. "What happened to them?" He asked angrily.  
  
Tyr looked down at the boy, right into his eyes. "I've told you that I will let you know when you're feeling better."  
  
"When the hell will that be?" Harper yelled. Tyr clamped a hand over Harper's mouth, anger evident in his eyes.  
  
"Be silent. It's dangerous here." Harper glared out at him with his reddened, jaundiced eyes, and he would have bit him if he had the energy. "I'm not telling you know because you're too sick to benefit from it, and you're too exhausted to remember it. We've had this conversation before, Harper."  
  
Harper was just confused now. He furrowed one eyebrow at Tyr, who let go of his mouth and wrapped him up tighter in his pristine white sheets. "You've been in and out of consciousness for four days now," The Nietzschean said, guide-carrying Harper back to the nondescript room in the low white villa. "You've asked what happened twice now. I told you the first time and...when I told you the second time I think you fell asleep while I was talking." Harper yawned. He was awfully tired... "So I won't tell you until you are up for it, because it's too long and involved. You just sleep and worry about healing."  
  
"What if I don't heal?" Harper asked weakly. He was lying back in bed now, Tyr standing over him, offishly.  
  
"You will. You've already recovered..." Tyr narrowed his eyes a little, the same disturbed look he had before. "...remarkably." Harper blinked slowly, his little, sickly body wracked with coughs.  
  
"Are you hungry?" Tyr asked off-handedly.  
  
Harper was about to say 'yes' when he yawned again.  
  
"I'll have someone bring you food in a little while, after you've rested some. When they come, don't...do anything. Don't talk to them, they won't talk back. Just ignore them and eat when they're gone. Can you do that, boy?"  
  
Harper scowled. "Why?"  
  
"Don't ask questions."  
  
Harper sneered at this a bit, and would have flipped Tyr off if he were up to it. "Wait. You...you're not going to stay here with me?" Tyr's face softened a little, if that were possible. "I cannot," He said. "I'm risking it being here now."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"I'll tell you-"  
  
"When I'm better. Right. Whatever." Harper was too exhausted to even tirade sarcastically.  
  
"Go to sleep, boy," Tyr said, his voice low and barely there. White closed on white with a soft *click*. Harper sighed, staring at the vapid white wall in front of him, listening to the breeze and the ocean in the high window. He took in a deep, shaky breath, and fought the guilt and the grief and loneliness that stabbed at him. He didn't even know where he was for Christ's sake, and he was lonely. That was pathetic.  
  
So, since he was too tired to find ways of not being pathetic, he lay his weary, aching head back down on the pillow, tried not to think of the blood in his urine, and went back to sleep eventually.  
  
Harper awoke maybe an hour or two later. His reddened, jaundiced eyes blinked languidly a couple times and he yawned, staring into the blindingly white wall. He heard the muffled clinks of crockery behind him and turned, still snuggled deep into his sheets.  
  
A girl, who, if she was human, was no more than sixteen, was setting a tray on the floor with a few simple plates. She didn't look at him.  
  
Harper was about to say something when he remembered what Tyr had said. He drew back a bit in his sheets, staring up at the strange, silent girl.  
  
She had long, black-black, almost purple hair that swept ethereally around her shoulders. She was paler than anything Harper had ever seen, and most of the kids he knew in Boston were pretty pale. She must have spent every waking moment indoors.  
  
Eventually she did turn and looked right at him, and Harper was startled a little by her large, not particularly attractive puke green eyes. He drew back in his sheets, cocooning underneath them like a baby.  
  
She didn't smile, but she didn't frown either. She cocked her head a bit, and narrowed her eyes, and then turned to leave, blending in almost perfectly with the stucco white walls.  
  
"Wait," He creaked out, his voice scratchy and high. The girl turned and waited. Harper hesitated, remembering that he wasn't supposed to speak to her, and then mentally telling Tyr to fuck right off already. "Where...where's Tyr?"  
  
"Who?" She said, umimpressed.  
  
"Tyr Anasazi."  
  
Her eyebrows raised a little, but she still didn't look impressed. "Master General Anasazi? He's dining. Why?"  
  
"Just...I would like to know."  
  
The girl narrowed her unattractive green eyes. "You're arrogant." She said, simply, and then flounced off. Harper, surprised, didn't move for a full two minutes. Then- "Master General?"  
  
--  
  
The 'dining hall' was filled to the brim with tough-talking, mostly soft people, all big and dark and deadly. Tyr hung around in the back, not comfortable enough in his present situation to really join in on any conversation. He held a glass of wine stiffly in one hand, not quite trusting it, and refused to initiate any 'schmoozing'.  
  
"Ah, General Anasazi," Someone- Representative Okasha- came up on his left. "Are you enjoying yourself this afternoon?"  
  
Tyr took a forced sip from his wine. "Yes, Representative, I am." He answered woodenly, shrugging slightly to make sure his long black sleeves were covering his bone spurs.  
  
"I was wondering if I may speak to you about your attack."  
  
Tyr narrowed his eyes. They believed he had been ambushed by highwaymen on the way from one town to another. Harper's 'injury' and subsequent illness had forced them to seek hospitality in this villa, which, Tyr had learned slowly, was owned by a powerful local politician. There had been a real 'General Anasazi', but so far he hadn't turned up, and Tyr intended to milk the false identity as long as he could. None of the softened politicians, apparently, had met the famed General Anasazi face to face, and it was an absurd sort of luck that the name occurred here.  
  
Another absurd sort of luck that made the real General Anasazi a victim of the Maru's fiery jetsam striking him in the back of the skull.  
  
"Yes?" Tyr neutrally prodded.  
  
Representative Okasha smiled saccharinely. "I have heard reports of fire falling from the sky that night," Tyr didn't even blink. "Some are saying it was miracle, a good omen that brought you into our presence."  
  
"Thank you," Tyr tried to remain as neutral as possible. The knowledge that 'General Anasazi' was, outside of Tyr's impersonation, a private warlord, probably would have helped.  
  
--  
  
Harper couldn't take it anymore. He tried to eat what the strange, not particularly attractive, rude girl had left, but he was having a hard time. There was some very putrid broth and a stale little chunk of bread, something that tasted like stagnant shaving water and something that was probably vegetables, but probably not something that human physiology could handle. The only reason Harper choked down most of the mess (except for the vegetables that he seriously thought would harm him) was that growing up in starvation made him grateful for anything, and life aboard the Andromeda hadn't conditioned that from him yet.  
  
After his meal he was feeling marginally better. His head ached less than it did when he first awoke. He still couldn't stand very well, but he could pull himself up enough to look out the porthole window high above his billowy pallet.  
  
He could see the ocean from here. This window faced away from the courtyard, and far in the distance, past expanse of leafy trees, was the ocean, beautiful and bluish green.  
  
"Hello? Tyr? Anybody?" Harper's voice was still sandpapery as he called out around him, wrapping a sheet haphazardly about himself like a toga for the damned. His eyes narrowed a bit and he painfully hoisted himself up into the windowsill again, staring longingly at the ocean.  
  
Oh, fuck it He thought. I'm young, I'm...healthy. I can do whatever I want. He looked around the bland white room again. No one's even going to notice I'm gone.  
  
And for one brainsick moment he believed that, and began to climb his sickly little body out the window of the low, stucco white villa. 


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two  
  
Harper landed on the gravel ground with a painful *thud*. He hadn't misjudged the distance from his prison's window to the ground, but he had misjudged just what shape, exactly, his body was in to absorb such a fall. His leg fell at a funny angle and he cringed, taking a long time to get his shaky, pained breathing under control.  
  
"Oh my God..." His voice broke a little and he spent a lot of time hunched over, staring at the ground. His right leg was eerily numb, and felt...off. Great.  
  
Logic wasn't exactly prominent in Harper's fevered head as he wrapped his damnation-toga around himself tighter and propped himself up on one broken leg, bruised, emaciated, and shaky, staring out into the forest that lay between him and his beloved ocean.  
  
Harper drew in a sharp breath and started limping out there, sick of the hostility that Tyr that showing towards him, his present ignorance, and his present incapacitation. He refused to be brought down, he refused to be effectively chained to a bed doing nothing, especially when an unspoiled- sounding ocean lay just past the forest.  
  
He stopped to lean against a tree and realized just how big it was. If we were up for trying, and he wasn't, he wouldn't have been able to put his arms all the way around it. Dylan wouldn't have been able to put his arms all the way around it.  
  
Oh, god, Dylan...  
  
Harper stared harshly at the bark on the tree, which was dark, moist, and rough. His small, pale hands were in complete contrast with the stark toughness of the tree. He looked up and up and up and branches of it stretched on forever, spreading slightly purplish leaves over him in a canopy, protecting his already ruined pale skin from the harshness of the beating sun.  
  
This planet had to have a particularly big sun, Harper thought to keep his mind off his crewmates as he limped carefully over giant roots. Either that or it was close to it's sun, but he knew there were calculations to determine such a thing- he just couldn't remember what any of them were right now, in his state of fevered forgetfulness. He wondered fleetingly if he had tried to escape his room the other two times he'd been lucid, and smiled devilishly at the thought. That would show Tyr!  
  
...Until the Nietzschean got sick of it and killed him.  
  
Which, let's face it, hasn't happened yet, so Harper's chances were still pretty good.  
  
If Harper had been paying attention he would have heard a slight rustling in the foliage behind him, but as it were, he was dizzy and aching and narrow-minded on his goal of finding the ocean, which was much further away than he thought. Many hours' walk, for a healthy person, at least. A few more excruciating steps over roots and bushes and he stopped to rest on a fallen log, pulling the once-clean white sheets around himself in the growing heat, the sheets sticking to his sweating, bruised skin. Even the thick canopy provided by the trees did not protect him from the sun's oblique rays, cutting down sharply through molecules.  
  
He was about to fall asleep, when he was pushed over roughly from behind, and tumbled off his log in an unruly heap.  
  
"-The hell?" He managed to get out before someone kicked him in the stomach.  
  
"Trying to escape again, eh, boy?" The same someone said. Harper struggled to breathe, struggled to make out forms in his dying vision.  
  
"No, I..." He couldn't get anymore out. About four men, all tall and dark and strong, stood around him, glaring, uniformed, weapons in hand.  
  
"Shut up," One of them said, and slapped Harper sharply in the face. The blow sent Harper down again, and he let out a choked cry when his broken leg was jostled by his fall. Then they descended upon him with fists and bludgeons.  
  
"What the HELL is going on?" Someone roared, and the four young, dark, tall strong men turned to look in surprise at Representative Okasha, staring menacingly at them, Tyr at his elbow.  
  
"Represent-"  
  
"Shut up!" Okasha yelled back. The young man flinched and looked at his feet. "Were you not instructued to inform General Anasazi of his slave's actions?"  
  
"We did, he-"  
  
"Be quiet!" Okasha's voice revealed that he was a little closer to loosing his patience this time.  
  
Harper turned over a bit and coughed up some blood.  
  
"That boy was already in delicate condition when our guest arrived," Okasha went on.  
  
"But, sir, we-"  
  
Whatever the young man was going to say was cut off yet again, as Okasha went on and on, leading the four back to the villa in one ashamed line.  
  
"Tyr," Harper managed to cough out. Tyr was haughtily pulling the bloodied sheets tighter around Harper's vulnerable form.  
  
"Be silent!" Tyr hissed.  
  
"I-" Harper squeaked when Tyr hoisted him up painfully onto one hip.  
  
"Not another word!" Tyr did yell this time, his voice tinged with a bit of a growl, and Harper shut up, gazing longingly over Tyr's shoulder in the direction of the ocean...  
  
Tyr strode resolutely towards the white villa, not caring when Harper's chin bounced painfully on his thick shoulder.  
  
"I cannot believe you," Tyr's voice was deceivingly soft. "Are you incapable of following even the smallest of orders?" They were closer to the villa now, closer to people who were milling around, seemingly lost and pointless.  
  
"Yes," Harper said vindictively.  
  
Tyr actually pinched him! On the soft, tender flesh right above the back of his knee. It fucking hurt! "Ow!" Harper cried out. No one even turned to look.  
  
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Tyr asked dangerously when they got back to Harper's prison cell of a breezy white room. He threw the boy painfully onto his billowy pallet, where Harper cringed, his bloodied sheets gripped painfully in his hands.  
  
Tyr threw a look around the room, where the girl with the unattractive green eyes and several other young people like her were milling around, putting the non-existent furniture back in order, clearing away the tray left for him. They all resolutely didn't look at Tyr, but they were still there.  
  
Tyr raised a hand and before Harper knew what was happening he smacked the boy, sharply, near the same place he had pinched him.  
  
"Ah! What the fuck?" Harper screeched. Tyr continued his punishment, raising his voice a little louder than necessary for the benefit of the eerily pale children in the room.  
  
"What part of don't. Do. Anything. Don't you understand?"  
  
"Tyr!"  
  
"The next time you fail to do as you're told, boy, you'd better believe I will flay the SKIN off you!"  
  
The door closed and faded into white on white. They were alone. Tyr let out a heavy breath and covered his face, maybe a little ashamed at what he had done, and sank to the floor to sit.  
  
"You fucking asshole!" Harper cried, and lashed out at Tyr with his good leg. Tyr caught it easily and let Harper try to beat out his frustration at the absurdity and inherent unfairness of his situation.  
  
"Ow, ow, ow," Harper cut in short, curling up on his side as pain spiked through him.  
  
"Shh," Tyr soothed, helping arrange Harper so he was a little more comfortable. He slowly (gently?) felt Harper's right leg, the broken one, prodding carefully.  
  
"Jesus fuck..." Harper's voice was still a pained whisper, a ghost of the rambonxious, boyish voice he used to have.  
  
"I'm sorry I had to do that," Tyr said softly.  
  
Tyr? Was apologizing?  
  
"Why..." Harper managed to get out, closing his eyes against the ringing in his head.  
  
"If I didn't, they'd suspect us," Tyr went on. "Harper...you have to trust me. You have to listen to me, there cannot be any confusion between us."  
  
Harper leaned his head wearliy to the side a bit, regarding Tyr through reddened, jaundiced eyes.  
  
The door opened again and the girl with the unattractive puke green eyes came back in, her impossibly pale hands contrasting starkly with the blackness of the chains she carried. She also carried a bundle of sticks and gauze, and handed these to Tyr. Tyr tried to take the chains from her as well, but she was a little reluctant to let them go.  
  
"I don't need you," Tyr said forcefully. "Leave us." At this, the girl dropped her gaze, relinquished her hold on the chains, and left, giving Harper what appeared to be a smug smile.  
  
"What? No way!" Harper choked out as Tyr manacled his good ankle, not harshly.  
  
"It wasn't my idea," Tyr easily subdued Harper by simply pushing him back on the pallet. "I wouldn't..." He let it hang.  
  
"Then who's idea was it?"  
  
"Okasha's. He suggested it." Tyr said as he lead the chain to an indistinct white ring hook in the wall, and fastened the other end there. "I was afraid if I didn't take his advice it would be...incriminating."  
  
Harper narrowed his eyes- Tyr was afraid? Then where the hell did that leave Harper?  
  
"Let me fix your leg," Tyr said softly, taking the sticks and gauze.  
  
"No way," Harper said snarkily, drawing back.  
  
"Harper, please." Tyr suddenly looked very old and very tired. "I don't trust their...healers."  
  
Harper took in a shaky breath and reluctantly let Tyr set his leg, cringing and wincing now and then.  
  
"We'll be fine if you trust me." Tyr went on, softly.  
  
"Where are we?"  
  
A long hesitation. "We're in the summer home of Lord Amasai. The land is called Casiija."  
  
"What planet?"  
  
"They don't...they think their sun revolves around them, Harper." Tyr said simply.  
  
Oh.  
  
"I see," Harper said, trying not to panic. He cringed a bit as his leg spiked in pain. "Wh...what happened to us?"  
  
Tyr still didn't look up. He sighed again, like he was about to go through something he was hoping he never would have to again. But, eventually, he did.  
  
--  
  
They had been going through Slipstream, after the state affair had wound down and Harper lay, incapacitated and probably lumbering towards a killer hangover, on the floor of the Maru. They had a distress call on one of the newer signatory worlds, a natural world disaster had rocked the planet and thousands were already dead. It was a particularly harsh leap, lots of twists and gut-wrenching turns. Beka was loving it, laughing maniacally, twisting the Andromeda to her will through the beautiful bluish green tunnels of the slipstream.  
  
Then came something...horrible.  
  
There was a tear, it seemed, or an eddie or a whirl... heard was a great *crack* and the Andromeda seemed to have been pushed from behind. Bright blackness and great nothingness.  
  
And Trance gasped, a horrifying, scared little gasp. Beka heard the gasp and a shiver of fear ran through her, one so powerful it nearly floored her. She turned her head, painfully, and saw Trance staring up at the vidscreen in trepidation, her eyes wide and ethereal, and Beka was fucking terrified.  
  
Then there was general confusion, and Beka was thrown from her seat, and everyone was cursing, and all three of Andromeda's voices responded with conflicting emotion, and Beka heard what sounded like metal ripping and puncturing and imploding.  
  
And then she woke up.  
  
"Oh, I'm sorry," Someone said, and Beka looked over to her right, still in the same cot that she had fallen asleep in, still in the same hospital type room where she had been left. "I wasn't supposed to wake you." The girl said softly, carefully rolling her wheeled bucket across the lab floor.  
  
"No, it's all right." Beka said, wearily. She cleared her throat. "It wasn't you."  
  
"Another nightmare?" The girl, Casey, didn't look up from her silent mopping, her pale skin a little burned from having been out in the sun all day.  
  
"Yeah," Beka sighed and threw an arm over her head. The lab was dark, mostly, except for a few lights on the sides over the desks, where papers were haphazardly strewn.  
  
"They'll go away," Casey said with conviction. "Eventually." She looked up at Beka, kind brown eyes softened. "Hey. You were telling the truth, weren't you? About the fire in the sky?"  
  
"Yeah," Beka's voice was exhausted.  
  
"I'm sorry my boss has you cooped up like this. It's just been so long since we've have contact with anyone from offworld. They wanna-"  
  
"Make sure I'm not a terrorist. I know," Beka managed a weak grin. "I've been through stuff like this before. You guys are taking care of me, at least. It could be worse."  
  
"Yeah," Casey agreed, smiling jovially. She slopped her mop back into the wheeled bucket carefully, and wiped her hands on her bland grey custodian uniform. "Get some sleep, hey?"  
  
"Yes, mom," Beka quipped weakly, and turned over and buried her face into her flimsy pillow more, exhausted. She didn't hear it when Casey turned off the rest of the lights, and locked the door as she left.  
  
---  
  
"We were.attacked," Tyr said, setting Harper's leg gently with the splints.  
  
"By who?"  
  
"We never found out. Some other force. Something.greater than anything I could put a face on."  
  
"I see," Harper sardonically. "Everything's so clear for me now."  
  
"Don't try my patience, boy," Tyr almost-growled. "I have had to put up with you for five days since we crashed here. Don't make me kill you know when you're progressed so much."  
  
Harper backed down and shut up, glaring up at Tyr through his dark blonde hair, plastered to his bruised, sallow face with fevered sweat.  
  
"There were explosions.and.confusion," Harper could tell that Tyr's ignorance was disturbing him, too. Tyr wasn't used to not being in control. "The first thing I did was run for the Maru and get off ship, out of the slipstream. I found you there after I got out into space."  
  
"Gee, thanks," Harper grumbled.  
  
"The slipstream tunnel imploded on itself," Tyr spoke slowly, like he was trying to make sense of his memories. "It was fantastic and. beautiful in a horrible sort of way."  
  
"Did you see the Andromeda?" Harper tried to keep it neutral, tried to keep the anxiety out of his voice.  
  
"No," Tyr sighed. "But the shape the ship was in when we left it.and that explosion."  
  
"It's pretty safe to say, huh?" Harper closed his eyes to Tyr's nod, trying not to think about the crew, and the ship he had brought to life.  
  
"The Maru was very badly damaged, as well," Tyr went on. "I lost control of it. And we crashed here, about two days' journey from this place, in the woods. Almost created a forestfire, but the storms put it out. You very nearly did not survive."  
  
"Then why did you bother with me? Why didn't you just leave me there?"  
  
Tyr looked up at him, the same, heartbreaking, disturbed sort of look he had. "I am not without honour," He said. "I do not leave behind a comrade, much less a child," He spat the last word out. Harper flinched and felt hotly ashamed. "Besides which. I'm on a strange planet, unknown. When we landed I didn't know if there was any life here at all, much less a civilization I could communicate with. It was important for my psyche that I have someone.familiar with me."  
  
It was probably as close to a compliment as Harper was ever going to get from Tyr. The boy smiled faintly, as Tyr tightly bound his leg and gently placed it on the bed, propped up with a bundle of extra sheets.  
  
The breeze rustled around in the stucco white room and the ocean rolled in peacefully in the distance.  
  
"How come they're being so nice to us- or, you, anyway? How come we can understand them?"  
  
Tyr was slowly unwrapping the bloodied sheets from around Harper, his eyes softening at the bruised, emaciated body before him. "When you are better," He said, "I will take you to the ocean and show you what I think of that. And.well, they are speaking a sort of.obsolete vernacular. It took me a while to get used to. I think you got used to it as well, from when you were lucid before, and you just don't remember when you couldn't understand them."  
  
"Thanks. That helps."  
  
"Boy." Harper shut up again.  
  
Tyr was wrapping Harper up in newer, cleaner sheets now. "I'm hungry again," Harper complained softly.  
  
"Good. Perhaps you'll start gaining weight."  
  
"Why did you tell them I was your slave?" Harper asked bitterly.  
  
The hands on the sheets around him stopped for a moment. "I didn't," Tyr said simply. "They assumed."  
  
"You couldn't have said I wasn't?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Why the fuck not?"  
  
Tyr was standing now, stubbornly staring out the window and not at Harper. "If you want the truth, it's a colour issue."  
  
Oh.  
  
"I see," said Harper, staring at the ceiling. 


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three  
  
Tyr dropped his gaze from the high window and paced the small room quietly. "You must take pains not to behave so much...like yourself while we are here. The slaves here are absurdly quiet, subservient, and-"  
  
"Well, no shit, Sherlock, they-"  
  
"And you must NEVER raise your voice!" Tyr warned. "Some of the whites have been put to death for that. They forgave you before because you were so ill." Tyr turned to look at Harper now, his eyes troubled. "Don't look anyone in the eye, except me and the other slaves. Don't speak to anyone except me and the other slaves, and then only when you're spoken to. And do not do anything unless I tell you."  
  
"Why can't I-"  
  
"Just shut up and do as I say, Harper." Tyr let out a heavy, shaky breath and leaned against one wall. "You've done more distasteful things before to survive, and you'll do it again."  
  
Harper turned a little in his billowy pallet and tugged at his pillow. Tyr was right. Harper would just have liked to have forgotten about it.  
  
"You will not try to escape again," Tyr said. "I thought taking your clothes away would stop you after the first time, but I seemed to have forgotten how stubborn you are," There was a hint of joviality in Tyr's tone. Harper allowed himself a small smile.  
  
"Where are my clothes now?" He asked, quietly.  
  
"They were...soiled beyond use."  
  
"Oh."  
  
They remained silent for a little while, Tyr staring at one wall, Harper staring at his pillow. Then Tyr said: "You have to understand this is a burden for me, as well." His voice was soft. Harper looked up at him with interest. "The Kodiak did not own slaves. We had kludges do our labour sometimes, yes, and it was harsh- but we did not keep a title on them. We'd let them have families, they were free to go if they had a place to go to. A true Alpha does not...need...a slave." There was pure disgust evident in Tyr's voice. "The men downstairs make me...they make me want to be ill."  
  
"I'm...sorry," Harper said softly, fingering the pristine white sheets a little.  
  
"I must go," Tyr said. "They think I am a General, and an honoured guest. We must keep up the facade until you are well enough to travel- then we'll get the hell out of here and figure out a way to get back into space." Tyr paused at the door. "After that, if you wish to go look for your fallen comrades, I'll not stop you."  
  
It was the smallest little offer of comfort, a reinforcement that Tyr did not take any of this personally, a reminder that if, in the future, he were beaten again- Tyr didn't mean it.  
  
"Thanks," Harper said.  
  
"I will have someone bring you another meal. Then you will go back to sleep. Do you understand me?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
Tyr raised an eyebrow and waited.  
  
"Yesss...s-sir," Harper forced it out of himself.  
  
It was a start.  
  
Tyr smiled his approval briefly, and then disappeared into white on white.  
  
--  
  
It was beginning to darken outside. Harper lay in his pallet for about ten minutes, staring up at the ceiling and the high, open window, watching the light on the ceiling and the opposite wall change and dimmer.  
  
He had just about nodded off, managing to forget about the tightening in his otherwise upset stomach, when the door opened softly and the girl from before entered, carrying a similar tray to the one before.  
  
"Well," She said, and he did notice a faint accent in her voice, but he couldn't place it. "His Highness is awake."  
  
Harper scowled a little, but tried not to let his annoyance show too much. The girl entered the room, her little white feet almost silent on the stone floor, and set the tray down by Harper's pallet. There was another bowl of soup that didn't look particularly attractive, some bread, something that looked like cheese, and a glass of what could have been water. The girl produced a spoon and set it on the side of the tray. There was also what looked like a little cake, small and round, on the end.  
  
"Thank you," Harper said softly.  
  
She looked up at him, startled. "What?"  
  
"Thank you," He said again. "For...bringing me this. I don't like being a hassle."  
  
"It's not a hassle," She shrugged. "It's not like I'd be doing anything better."  
  
Harper struggled to get into a seating position, up against one wall. The girl lifted the tray and placed it on his lap. "Did you make this?" He asked, feeling weird about to eat while she sat on his floor, staring up at him from under painfully straight and clean black hair.  
  
"No," She said. "It was leftovers. Except the little piece of cake. They're serving it downstairs and your master asked me to bring you some."  
  
"He did?"  
  
The girl nodded unsmilingly, her unattractive puke green eyes boring a hole into him. "There was more, but...I sort of ate it."  
  
Harper smiled faintly, his head still aching a little. "That's okay," He said, knowing that if he were in her place, he probably wouldn't have served the food at all.  
  
"Your master is very kind," She said, wistfully.  
  
"I...guess so."  
  
"He's not like the men here," Harper tensed up a bit. "He's so much taller, and stronger. Cunning."  
  
Harper stared at her and wondered what the hell was wrong with this planet. "What's your name?" He tried to change the subject.  
  
"Panga," She replied, casually. "What's yours?"  
  
"Harper," he said, and added, before thinking: "Seamus Harper."  
  
"You have two names?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Which one do I use?"  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"Do I call you Zaymus or do I call you Harper?" Her accent twisted his name and Harper could barely recognize it.  
  
"You could call me either, I guess. Most of my friends call me Harper."  
  
"What does your master call you?"  
  
"Boy."  
  
She smiled at this. "I'll call you Zaymus. I like that."  
  
Harper was too tired and hungry to care either way. "Okay," He said, after taking a spoonful of soup, which wasn't as bad as he remembered it.  
  
"...My mistress really likes your master as well."  
  
Huh.  
  
"Who's your mistress?" Harper had eaten almost all of the cheese on the bread. He was holding it down pretty good, considering.  
  
"I work for one of Okasha's sisters, Lady Geeia."  
  
"Work for?"  
  
Panga only looked at him. "You broke your leg," She said, dropping the gaze of her ugly green eyes.  
  
"Yeah," Harper's voice was a little bitter. "I was trying to get out to see the ocean,"  
  
Panga smiled again, and there was laughter in her accented voice. "You were trying to escape," She disputed. "You've done it before. You shouldn't, you'll never get out of here if they don't want you to leave."  
  
Harper shrugged and finished off his soup, looking suspiciously at his water. "If I don't try, what good am I?"  
  
Panga cocked her head and looked up at him again.  
  
Harper sniffed at the water a bit. It smelt a little metallic, a little like silver. He took an experimental sip. Tasted like water. Not particularly clean water, but he wasn't complaining. He had drunk water from here before- but Tyr had brought him that.  
  
Oh, well. He drank it.  
  
"You're dangerous," Panga said softly when she took the glass from him, and picked up his tray.  
  
"What do you mean?" Harper asked, suppressing a yawn. His room had darkened quickly.  
  
"Well, if I'm right..." Panga stood in the doorway a little while longer, not looking at him. "We'll see what I mean." She gave him one last little smile, half comforting, half mocking, and left him alone to sleep.  
  
--  
  
Harper had a nightmare that night.  
  
It was a jumbled conglomeration of vague memories and cartoonish super horror, if Harper had been paying close enough attention.  
  
First, he was back on Earth, back in suburban Boston, and in his dream he was too stoned to think or act clearly. He huddled in a sewer tunnel, the one where he always went when...  
  
In his hands was a plastic bag full of industrial glue solvent that he held giddily to his mouth and nose, breathing in the burning fumes and feeling it split open the tiny tears in the back of his throat. He had a pretty good drip going on, and his eyes watered and he smiled, shaking ever so slightly, at the ray of light shooting through the manhole to the opposite side of him.  
  
He was eight. The sewer tunnel was in Quincy, on the coast of what was once a nation, alongside what was once an ocean.  
  
In the sewers were hot water pipes, still in use for the factories and the homes of the Nietzscheans deemed low enough to live on Earth with the kludges. Over two of these pipes was a pile of old rags and several young humans, including Harper's father, who was only twenty-one, huddled upon.  
  
Harper looked at the snoring mass and smiled queasily. He struggled to his feet; the plastic bag in his hand deflated a little bit and some of the industrial solvent slipped out and burned his delicate little fingers. He didn't care.  
  
He didn't know where he was going as he traipsed down the messy corridor, swinging his acidic little bag in front of him, singing a tuneless, off-key diddy. He heard laughter behind him, but was too stoned to care.  
  
Then they were on him. And Harper screamed and kicked and they yelled back and no one tried to help him, and he was too stoned to wonder why.  
  
Then he was lying on the floor of the Maru, face down, feeling like he'd just drank his weight in vodka, and possibly his weight again in gin.  
  
He looked up, the world spinning, and Trance, his old, original, purple princess Trance, was standing before him, smiling gently.  
  
"Pay attention." She said.  
  
"Wuh?"  
  
"You got high, didn't you?"  
  
"Drunk, maybe. High? ...Maybe."  
  
"Clear your head." She smiled again, a little sadder this time. "Pay attention."  
  
Then there was pain, and blinding lights, and screaming, and fire, and things falling out of the sky like a biblical plague.  
  
Then Harper woke up with a violent struggle in the billowy white pallet, Tyr standing over him looking like he'd just seen a ghost.  
  
"Tyr?" Harper said, nervously, his voice small and frail. He shook a little, sweating, the images of that of which he was not quite sure he wanted to know still fresh in his mind's eye, along with dark shadows lurking in the Quincy sewers- stop it!  
  
Tyr visibly flinched when Harper twitched, which made the boy even more nervous.  
  
"It was just a dream, Tyr," Harper smiled weakly. "Got lots of those. I'm not sicker or nothing."  
  
Tyr nodded, solemnly, his stony face hiding the softness in his dark eyes. He moved forward slightly. The sunlight shooting in through the high window lit the white wall ablaze, making Tyr seem darker than the eternal spotty walls of deep space. "Do you think you feel well enough to go outside?"  
  
Harper hesitated, looking down at his bruised up self. "I don't know. Besides my leg.I guess so. You'd have to." He scowled and bit the inside of his cheek, too stubborn to say it out loud.  
  
"Yes, I know," Tyr came to stand near Harper's pallet now, slinging a white garment over his shoulder. "If it helps you to recover faster, and thus improves our chances for getting back offworld, then I am not adverse to-"  
  
"Fine!" Harper said, not unkindly, staring at the ceiling while Tyr un- manacled his good ankle. He didn't want to hear anything that reminded him of his present situation. Whatever the alternative may be.  
  
Tyr took away some of the pristine white sheets slowly, carefully, with a gentleness that surprised Harper. They must get it from taking care of all those kids. He thought, and then scowled and wondered where the hell that thought came from.  
  
He didn't resist when Tyr helped him to his feet, slowly, painfully, tactfully looking pointedly at the top of Harper's head. He let Harper steady himself across his chest and slipped the flimsy, simple white garment over the little human's head.  
  
"Ugh," Harper said, without thinking, when the garment was finally on him.  
  
"Indeed," Tyr agreed, the disgust evident in his voice as he secured the garment along Harper's slim back.  
  
It was a simple tunic, made of something cottony and breathy and soft that felt good against Harper's bruised and sun burnt flesh. It fell to just above his knees, and the pure virgin whiteness of it made him even pastier in colour and look very vulnerable, blending in neatly with the white background. If he weren't so sun burnt he would have been invisible.  
  
Maybe that's the point, Harper thought bitterly. Tyr was still tying the tunic in the back in such a way that Harper was beginning to think he wouldn't be able to get it off himself. Oh well. He'd just have to live the rest of his life without ever taking off this tunic. Better than being dressed by someone else.  
  
Tyr helped him back to sit on the low, billowy pallet. Harper yawned and stretched, and several of his bones cracked wincingly, loudly, and Harper flinched. If Tyr noticed, he didn't respond, for which Harper was thankful. The boy looked up miserably as Tyr undid the straps on a pair of complicated looking sandals.  
  
"You don't have to-"  
  
"You want to try it yourself?" Tyr said, flippantly, holding out one of the sandals expectantly. Harper flushed furiously and looked away.  
  
"Didn't think so," He thought he heard Tyr say, as the big Nietzschean knelt at Harper's feet.  
  
It was a weird feeling, possibly weirder than anything Harper had experienced on this planet thus far. Tyr's big hands held Harper's relatively dainty left foot gently, easing it into the mould of the strappy softwood sandal kindly, his warmth emanating into Harper's morning-cold toes like sunlight on frost. The straps went up to Harper's knee, criss- crossing, the beige of the soft wood standing out against Harper's pale, bruised, and sun burnt skin. Harper tensed minutely, almost a shiver, at the feel of Tyr's arm against his sensitive calf. The Nietzschean didn't appear to notice it, but that, of course, was a lie.  
  
Harper hissed, barely, when Tyr touched his right foot.  
  
"Does it pain you?"  
  
"Not really."  
  
"The truth."  
  
"A little. Ow!" Tyr slid the sandal over Harper's right foot, which was a little swollen, very quickly. Harper winced as he gently secured the straps over the aching flesh, and over the splint. It secured it nicely in place, as well.  
  
Before he was done, Tyr's head lifted a fraction of an inch. Then he turned to look at the white on white doorway, and Harper cocked an eyebrow.  
  
The door opened and a tall dark man leaned casually against the doorway. He wasn't nearly as tall or big as Tyr, but the engineered elegance of his costume spoke volumes. He was as black as the ocean night, at least, as black as ocean nights on Earth should have been.  
  
"Representative Okasha," Tyr started, with a meticulously crafted casual air, not getting up.  
  
"This was the last place I thought to look," The other man said jovially, smiling. He had a small goatee and kind dark eyes. "I never though that such a feared war commander like yourself could be such a gentle master."  
  
"That's." Tyr seemed to be measuring his words, as he stood up slowly. "Kind of you to say." The big Nietzschean looked down at Harper and nudged the boy's good leg with his foot ever so slightly. Harper realized he had been staring at Okasha's face. He bit his lip hurriedly and dropped his gaze to his swollen foot.  
  
Harper would swear to the Divine he heard Okasha chuckling. Chuckling! He scowled at the floor and tried not to flush.  
  
"So this is Zaymus," The local aristocrat said, not unkindly. "He must have slept like a baby after yesterday's.excursion."  
  
Oh, you can go and fuck right off, Harper thought cruelly.  
  
"Does he say hello?" Okasha went on, like a bemused uncle.  
  
"He's shy," Tyr said quickly, his hand brushing up against Harper's cheek slightly.  
  
You bastard.  
  
"Lim tells me he is always hungry," Okasha went on, stepping into the room a little bit.  
  
Harper made a face and forgot to keep staring at the floor. Who the hell was Lim?  
  
As if on cue, a teenaged boy as pale as a cloud, with raven black hair that flopped playfully into his eyes, stepped into the room, smiling. He was carrying a simple porcelain tray and Harper wondered fleetingly where Panga was.  
  
"You are an extremely kind Master, General," Okasha went on, like it was some great joke. "He is dreadfully spoiled." He chuckled again when Harper realized he had been staring up at the man's face.  
  
"I am...not without my weaknesses," Tyr managed to make it sound like he had a sweet tooth for chocolate.  
  
"Oh, come on, Tyr, you don't have to proove anything to me." Okasha laughed outright at the stony expression on Tyr's face. "It couldn't kill you to smile, you know. After your little one is done his breakfast, Lord Amasai would like a word with us. Come outside with me and have some tobacco, leave the boys to their gossip. They are not without their lives, you know." Okasha was still chuckling irritatingly as he led Tyr out to the stucco white terrace. As he left, Tyr threw a glance over his shoulder at Harper that warned of volumes of pain should any cover be blown.  
  
The door closed to white on white and Harper could still hear the Representative's good natured laughing.  
  
As soon as the door closed, Lim's body transformed and he slouched, leaning against one wall.  
  
"So you're Zay," he said with a smile, as good natured as his master.  
  
"Yeah..."  
  
"I'm Lim."  
  
"So I see." Harper said, irritably. He stared down at the tray Lim had dumped on his lap, trying to shift his aching legs without upsetting the same drab soup and cup of water. "It's the same as last night," He said dejectedly, his voice low.  
  
"Well, dur," Lim said, picking at his nails impatiently. "Leftovers. Sor- ry, your royal fucking highness," Then he flashed a white smile and Harper knew it was in jest.  
  
Harper smiled back, weakly, and dipped some of the stale bread into the putrid green broth.  
  
"That's pretty fucking sweet, what you did, yesterday." Lim went on like he was discussing the weather. "We were all watching from the kitchens. The way you just walked out of there."  
  
"You told on me?" Harper wasn't angry, really, his situation was surreal enough that he couldn't be.  
  
"I didn't," Lim scoffed distastefully. "Aza, one of the cooks, she did. She's old, though. You can't blame her."  
  
"How old are you?" Harper asked, for curiosity's sake.  
  
Lim stood up off the wall proudly. "I'll be sixteen in a month. I think." He shrugged. "Sometime next month. Around sixteen. Anyway." He flicked floppy black hair out of his eyes. "By then I'll be able to go with my master back home. He always said it was too dangerous before."  
  
Harper ruffled his brow. "Why?"  
  
Lim shrugged. "Master represents one of the...poorer districts here." He said slowly. "He says that there aren't many whites there, because the people are too poor to take care of us. I'm a luxury, he says," Lim smiled proudly at that, too. "In fact, a lot of the work that the industry in his district is based on is labour that, normally, a slave would do. But actual people have to do it, 'cause they're so poor. You know, black people." Harper blinked. Lim didn't notice. "So I've never left this compound."  
  
"So...what do you do all the time?"  
  
"Oh, I'm supposed to help out with the kitchen staff. Usually me 'n Panga just fuck around." Harper blinked again, but he kept staring at his rapidly diminishing soup. For such crappy soup, he sure did eat it quickly. "Master has lots of other help, at his home, but he doesn't have any valets but me, and he wouldn't let me travel with him like you and the General." Lim leaned his head to the side a bit. "Does the General have lots of other slaves? At his home?"  
  
"Uh...no."  
  
Lim smiled lasciviciously. "Not even girls?"  
  
"He has-" Harper bit the inside of his cheek, stopping himself. "You know, I'm still really sick and hurt and...I'm not even sure I can remember where home is."  
  
Lim's dark, almost feminine eyes widened. "Ooh...fuck, Zay, you're in it bad!"  
  
"What?"  
  
"I would die if I were like that. Seriously. I would." Harper suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. Lim was as melodramatic as teenagers anywhere.  
  
"I'm fine, Lim," He said firmly. "I'm just...confused right now. Could you help me?"  
  
"With what?"  
  
"Where are we?"  
  
Lim rolled his eyes. "Oh, right. We're in Lord Amasai's summer home. On the coast."  
  
Harper's eyes glowed. "Near the ocean?"  
  
"Of course, dumbass."  
  
"Have you seen the ocean?"  
  
Lim rolled his eyes again. "No," He said sarcastically. "Never."  
  
Harper scowled. "You're not helping!"  
  
"'Course I've seen the ocean. We have bonfires down there, every month. We...oh. You're from the mountains, aren't you?"  
  
"Ye...yes?"  
  
"Right. Okay. Yeah, I'll take you to the beach when you're better, if your master lets you. To a bonfire. If you promise to show me the mountains one day."  
  
"I can't-"  
  
"Well," Lim shrugged. "My master likes your master. Probably after you've gone home, and after I've had my birthday, we'll come and visit you. And you can show me around." Lim smiled, and Harper was reminded of himself on Earth at that age.  
  
"Oh...kay." He said, and slowly smiled back.  
  
The door opened without warning and Okasha popped his starkly dark head in. "What are you doing in here?" He said with mock severity. "You're filling his simple little head with your tales of revolution, aren't you?"  
  
"No, master!" Lim said, but there was laughter in it. Okasha came in the room, a stony-faced Tyr behind him. "Take those trays and get them clean. Don't dawdle." His voice was still free from severity or anger, and Lim obeyed with a smile on his face. Once the boy was gone Okasha lingered in the doorway. "Hurry down," He said to Tyr. "And bring Zay with you." He left the door open to the breezy sound of the lazy morning.  
  
Tyr remained looking at the open door for a moment longer, his eyes troubled.  
  
Harper faked a yawn. "I'm tired, Tyr." He said. "I thought I could...have a nap."  
  
"No," Tyr said firmly, coming to stand in front of the boy. "They requested your presence. I cannot risk their anger."  
  
Harper scowled. "They seem like a pretty friendly bunch, you know," He said, and quickly added: "without all the slavery and everything."  
  
"Okasha is an exception," Tyr lowered himself to sit beside Harper on the low, billowy pallet. "You've made friends here. So have I. Let's not ruin those alliances by refusing their requests."  
  
"Makes sense," Harper conceded softly. He stared down at his splint. "I'm sorry I tried to run away. I didn't realize-"  
  
"I know." Tyr sighed and rubbed his face. "Don't bother yourself with things like that. Just be quiet and do as you're told. I..." He sighed again. "I will try to take care of the rest." He didn't turn to face Harper. "I'm afraid I may have prolonged our stay here."  
  
"What? What do you mean?"  
  
"Beyond your healing."  
  
"How?"  
  
Tyr's face darknened and his fingers twitched and Harper bit his lip. "General Anasazi...the real General Anasazi...was a war leader. A fierce commander. Sought after. Apparently he was just coming home from a triumph when...we...landed. Usurped his name. He lives in a mansion in the mountains in the south. Apparently, he has no family. No wives." Tyr scowled again. "I am beginning to doubt he had much of a household at all. They were surprised that I didn't leave you for dead. They are surprised that I stayed to wait for you to heal."  
  
"But they don't seem all..." Harper stopped when he remembered the young men in the forest the day before. "Why are we staying longer than we have to?"  
  
"I...somehow made a deal with Lord Amasai. Inadvertently. Apparently someone else had mentioned my name...General Anasazi's name, anyway, and by the time Lord Amasai got around to me, the rumour was that I had made him an offer to deal with a separatist rebellion. I couldn't...refuse. I do not know how these people would react."  
  
"I see." Harper didn't, really, but it made sense in a Tyr-ish sort of way.  
  
Tyr's face darkened a bit more, and Harper was about to ask what was wrong, when Tyr stood suddenly. "Enough of this," He said brusquely. "We are here now, we must deal with this as it is. Come." He bent and lifted one of Harper's arms around his head.  
  
"Tyr, I don't think," Harper winced when he was hoisted up, barely able to keep balance on one leg, leaning against Tyr like a big black tree.  
  
"You're right," Tyr said. "I'll have to carry you." He lifted Harper onto his hip like a child again, and Harper had learned enough not to complain too loudly. Chapter Four  
  
"Fine. We'll go over this again." The menacing, dark, well, let's face it, bitch said with a sigh.  
  
Barrister Wilkinson answered with his own long suffering sigh. "We won't go over it again. We've been over it a thousand times already. You're not going to get any more new information right now."  
  
"That's exactly the problem, isn't it!" Beka thought that the tall, angry woman was supposed to be a prosecutor of some kind. The blonde pilot's lip curled up a little as she cocked her head. What a bitch. Really. "If your client isn't offering us any new information, this is a complete waste of time." Ms. Fowler, the prosecutor, started gathering up her papers and files in a flurry. The lab technician who had hired her rolled his eyes and got up from the table, ready for their swift departure.  
  
"You had better get your story straight," The prosecutor glared acidly at Beka, "Or they are going to put you away for a long time."  
  
Beka only looked up at Ms. Fowler serenely, sucking slowly on the small malt chocolate candies she had been sneaking from the shared bowl on the table.  
  
With one last huff, Ms. Fowler left the room, the lab technician trailing in her angry wake.  
  
Wilkinson sighed, a heavy, weighted sigh. Beka snuck another malt chocolate.  
  
"I'm sorry for that," The barrister said, looking older than she was told he was. "She's impossible. Had a hate-on for me since high school."  
  
"No worries," Beka said, flicking her hair slightly. She blinked a little, forgetting momentarily about the heavy bags under her eyes, about the nightmares that plagued her.  
  
"We're going as quickly as we can," He went on, his eyes still closed to the soft, polluted light that fell in sideways through the shuttered window. "To get you out of here. Out of that lab. It's horrible conditions to hold someone."  
  
"I've been through worse," Beka said casually. Wilkinson opened his eyes and regarded her. "Seriously, I have. I'm tough." She narrowed weary blue eyes slightly. "Don't you believe me?"  
  
"I believe you." He said, soft brown eyes unblinking. "I have to. Don't I." It wasn't a question.  
  
Beka smiled weakly as he opened the door and waited for her to exit before him. The guard was still standing outside, sullenly, waiting, not particularly big or heavy. He had, however, some impressive weaponry hanging from his belt, and Beka's neck still stung from it's tease on her neck at her first escape attempt. She had tried twice after that, despite her knowledge in it's futility. She was stubborn.  
  
Beka suddenly missed Harper very much, and a familiar deep ache nestled into her stomach.  
  
"I have a room set aside and everything," Wilkinson went on as the light handcuffs were fastened around her wrists again. The plain, loose white plastic garments nestled stiffly around her as they walked down the long, plain corridors to her lab cell. "A few more days, I promise. I know it's taking long, but I have to get the papers in order. They're.they're not being cooperative."  
  
"I know," Beka said, unsmiling, as she stepped inside the door of the lab. "I.it's fine. Don't stress about it. I don't have anywhere to go, anyway."  
  
Wilkinson smiled sadly and held out one weary arm, stopping the door before it the guard could shut it. "Three more days. Tops. Then you'll be in a real room with real meals and everything."  
  
"Sounds like heaven." Beka smiled again, and it didn't reach her eyes, and she shifted uncomfortably, her bare feet cold against the lab floor. "You.could they find.what I asked for?"  
  
The last time Beka had seen Dylan, he had been impaled on a large shard of one of the slipfighter's broken seats. Then they had stormed her and taken her away. And here she was.  
  
"I have the ashes," Wilkinson said bluntly, not unkindly.  
  
Beka blinked and looked away. "He.they're."  
  
"When you're out of here, would you like to have a ceremony for him?"  
  
"Yeah. Yeah, thanks." Beka looked up again, trying to smile, the uncertain little girl long gone.  
  
Barrister Wilkinson smiled and nodded again, closing the door ever so softly. "Everything's going to be fine, Beka." He said. "Get some sleep."  
  
With that, he closed the drab grey door and Beka could hear his soft footsteps down the hall.  
  
The lab was dark again, with only a few lights on the sides over desks light up, glowing eerily in the corner of Beka's eyes. Well. At least she had windows, even if they were small.  
  
The windows were low in the wall, dirty, the glass cold to the touch. The lab was located in a skyscraper, hundreds of stories off the ground- at least, that's what she could gather. She spent most of the day huddled in one corner, ignoring the technicians as they went about their work ignoring her, trying to suppress the uneasy quivering in her stomach, trying to forget the sound of Trance gasping and the horrifying beauty of her last slipstream jump. Beka would stare down at the city, big and dirty, at the thousands, millions of hovercars that sped past in an hour, the changing billboards and neon ads, scrolling words in a kanji system that looked vaguely familiar.  
  
It had taken her a long time to get used to the accent and.offish vernacular that these people spoke with. She reacted with violence, at first, of course. They had just as hard a time understanding her, so they locked her up in this lab until they figured out that she really was sort of harmless, outnumbered and without weapons. They still wanted to make sure she wasn't part of some bigger external threat.  
  
The city now was dark, black, light up on the edges by neon lights and flashing billboards, headlights and taillights and reflective clothing. It glowed from the center, and when Beka couldn't sleep she would huddle in the same corner and stare at the glowing center of the massive city, far below her, until she got lost in it's murky yellowness and snapped back, suddenly engulfed with the same fear that had spiked in her when the Andromeda was.  
  
There was a glass mug on the counter, the counter that was usually spotless and immaculate. A scrap of paper lay next to it, scribbled with a message in a runic, almost ancient looking script. Beka could read it, anyway.  
  
Missed you today, Bek. It read. Thought you'd be done by the time I got in, but I guess those suits are even longer-winded than I imagined.  
  
Beka allowed herself a genuine smile. At least, in Casey, she had one honest friend here.  
  
Barrister Wilkinson is awesome, tho, Casey went on in her note. He's gotten me out of more trouble than you can imagine being in. Believe me. I hope I'll get to see you tomorrow, we can chat then. I left you some herbal tea, it'll help you sleep. Use the Bunsen burner to heat some water. Later- Casey.  
  
There was a small blackish teabag inside the mug and Beka filled a large beaker with water, turning on a small flame and allowing it to boil. She stared at the flame and wrapped her skinny arms around herself, let out a long, shaky breath, and tried not to think of the Andromeda.  
  
---  
  
The stucco white corridor and courtyard outside his room looked so much more spectacular now that he wasn't so fevered. A small smile almost graced Harper's face when Tyr carried him out into the open hallway, a light breeze caressing his not-too-sweaty hair, ruffling through his breezy white slave garment.  
  
"Remember what I told you, boy," Tyr almost growled.  
  
"What?" Harper retorted, irritated.  
  
"About being humble. Not making a scene. You're already making a fool of me."  
  
Harper scowled and, without realising it, rested his head against Tyr's shoulder, still perilously tired. "I'm still sick, you know." He said softly.  
  
"I know. But we do what we must to survive." He propped Harper up a little, more violently than was necessary, and Harper bit back a complaint. "That is Lord Amasai," Tyr pointed quickly at a man standing in the centre of the group of dark people congregating in the center of the courtyard, a plethora of pale ghosts lurking in the shadows, literally. "He is the people's elected leader of this country." Tyr said the sentence with disdain, like the mundane politics of such a primitive planet were beneath him. "Casiija has several enemies, mostly to the north. Which, incidentally, is where they raided all their slaves from." Harper would've flinched if he had the energy. Tyr sounded more and more angry every minute he had to spend in this distasteful rule of slave-master, and he sounded like he was trying very hard to keep a tight rein on it.  
  
"Elected leader?" Harper tried to keep up. After his exhausting breakfast with Lim, he wasn't up for an entire day of waiting around on Tyr. Bleugh.  
  
"There is a King, who lives in a palace in the town not far from here. He is only a child." Surprisingly, Tyr didn't spit it out this time. "Somebody has always had control of the land in his lieu, since he was a baby, when his father died. It was another lord before Amasai. A few months later, he was murdered. And Lord Amasai has been leader ever since."  
  
Oh.  
  
"How is that elected?"  
  
Tyr sighed and, if it were possible, rolled his eyes. "Don't even bother worrying about it. It's none of your concern."  
  
Harper's lip curled a little at this. While it was true that the inner scandals of politics were probably the last thing he should be concerning himself with - especially when he still forgot not to look his betters in the eye - he hated to be treated like such a simpleton.  
  
Tyr stopped and stepped towards the edge of the corridor, leaning so that Harper was almost sitting on the banister overlooking the courtyard. "That is Lady Geeia." He said, pointing again at a tall, elegant lady in the centre of the proceedings. "She is Okasha's twin sister. She is very much.like him."  
  
"She likes you," Harper said with just a hint of teasing in his voice.  
  
Something that could have been a sigh left Tyr's body. "So the slave gossip has already reached you," He said wearily. "It's.purely physical."  
  
Harper laughed. "What the hell else did you think it was?"  
  
Tyr glared up at Harper. "She's not going to hinder our leaving this place." He said with conviction.  
  
"I know," Harper said softly, dropping his gaze and staring at his splint and swollen foot. "I was just.having some fun."  
  
There was a long, weighted pause. "Good," Tyr said, eventually, and Harper wondered what that could mean.  
  
There was an outside staircase that they took down into the courtyard, huge, green, ethereal blossoms coming up to greet them, pink and yellow flowers blooming and fragrant and lighting up the courtyard with colour.  
  
The sky was a staggering blue and went on forever, and endless stretch punctuated only by the quivering white sun high in the center.  
  
As soon as Tyr stepped out of the shade of the white stucco walls, Harper felt like he was going to die. Sunlight hit his skin directly and he screwed his eyes shut, burying his head again, unashamedly, into Tyr's dark shoulder. His entire body spiked out in gooseflesh in the heat, hot shivers, he stared sweating almost instantaneously and he honestly didn't know how long he could hold out. He had gotten used to the heat radiating off the shaded white stucco, but this was unbearable.  
  
It was the sort of heat you could see rising off the ground and on the skin of others, the heat you could breathe into your body and wear on your back. Drawing from experience, Harper knew if he spent more than five minutes in this direct sunlight, he was going to be felled for a long time coming.  
  
"I know," Tyr said comfortingly as Harper whimpered unconsciously. He turned quickly and Harper found himself in the starkly cool shade, sighing contentedly. "Remember to stay out of the sun. In your condition, it will harm you greatly."  
  
Harper almost gave Tyr a snide remark, but he looked at the older man's weary, commanding face and bit the inside of his cheek. He sighed and carefully leaned against the cool white wall so he didn't fall right over.  
  
"I know you are tired," Tyr continued. "I want nothing more than for you to heal properly so we can leave this godforsaken rock. I do not want you to exert yourself too much while we are out here."  
  
"Well, if that's the case, couldn't you just-" Whatever Harper was about to suggest, it was cut off when Tyr clamped a hand down over the boy's mouth.  
  
His eyes were wide with warning as he muttered: "What did I tell you? Silence."  
  
Tyr dropped his grip of Harper's mouth and the boy bit his lip a little, and then dropped his gaze, if only to stop staring into those troubled dark eyes, trying to forget the feel of the Nietzschean's hand splayed across his face.  
  
Representative Okasha had come up behind Tyr at some point, with is sister Lady Geeia. He made a big show of introducing Harper as "The General's spoilt little pet," and the Lady absolutely loved it.  
  
"Oh, he's adorable!" She said, pinching Harper's cheeks. Pinching! Harper, at Tyr's pantomimed cue, smiled weakly and tried to look away as quickly as possible. "And how do you like your master, little one?"  
  
"He's shy," Tyr supplied again, thankfully.  
  
"Aww.leave it to you, General Anasazi, to take such a shy little thing under your protection."  
  
Oh, this was too good. Harper risked a glance through lowered lids at Tyr's uncomfortable reaction.  
  
"That's.kind of you to say." Tyr took one involuntary step back from the wealthy woman's gaze.  
  
Representative Okasha broke up the uncomfortable scenario when he laughed heartily and presented Harper with a crude crutch he had just cut down from one of the trees in the courtyard. He made a show of the bruises he obtained on his arms and back when he fell out of the tree, amid his sister's giggles.  
  
"This is so you no longer have to burden your master carrying you around like a black prince," He said, jovially, not realising just how much his words offended the engineer.  
  
"Th-thanks," Harper said slowly, remembering that he was supposed to be shy, looking determinedly at the ground and not at the Representative's face.  
  
"Polite, albeit spoiled." Okasha said with laughter in his voice. "Come, Tyr, the Lord Amasai wishes to speak to us." He said the state leader's name with just the slightest hint of bitterness. Harper barely heard it, so intent was he with studying the green, green grass that stuck out from under his flimsy sandal.  
  
Tyr gave Harper one last warning, not unfriendly glance, and followed the Representative and his sister slowly to where Lord Amasai was seated near a grove of trees with several other highly decorated individuals.  
  
Lord Amasai was the colour of rum in coffee, and his skin shone in the heat but did not gleam with sweat. He was by no means a big man, but emanated a power in his slenderness and impressive height. He was just as tall as Tyr, if not taller- Harper couldn't judge from this distance.  
  
Panga, her black-black hair swept back into a loose half-ponytail, was laying a wide chart over a table on the grass. So pale was her skin that Harper couldn't tell where she ended and her slave garment began. She looked like a little pearl rolled in from of the ocean, nestled into the green, pink, and yellow courtyard, outnumbered and dwarfed by her dark counterparts in their lavish costumes.  
  
She looked up, as if she felt Harpers eyes on hers, and looked back at him for just a second. He almost thought she was going to give him a friendly smile but there was something else there- pity? -and then she turned back to her work, working her jaw unconsciously like she had just seen something that disturbed her.  
  
Then Harper made the mistake of letting his gaze wander to the whisky eyes of Lord Amasai.  
  
So startled was the skinny Earthen engineer that he didn't realize he was committing the previously proclaimed grave offense of looking directly into the nobleman's face. Lord Amasai smiled faintly, his eyes hard and bitter, and a shiver ran down Harper's spine. It wasn't until Lord Amasai blinked, almost laughingly, that Harper realized what he had been doing and dropped his gaze to the ground, again.  
  
It occurred to Harper that he had a crick in his neck from staring at the ground. He sighed miserably and rubbed his neck ineffectually.  
  
"Hey!" A friendly voice spooked him out of his already spooked reverie, and he looked up to see Lim in the shade next to him, playing with his fingertips in the same way he had half an hour before. "What are you doing right now?"  
  
"Standing here talking to you, why?" Harper was suddenly very tired, if it was possible on top of the exhaustion he felt before.  
  
Lim rolled his eyes melodramatically. "Don't be a smart ass. I mean does your master need you for anything? Because I'm done with the dishes and there's something I want to show you."  
  
Harper hazarded a glance back to the small congregation near the grove of trees, and thankfully the Lord with the hard whisky eyes wasn't looking at him this time. "I don't know," he said truthfully. "I'm still sick. I'm just supposed to stay here."  
  
"Oh, where's the fun in that?" Lim went around to Harper's left side, where the crutch wasn't, and took his arm the way Beka sometimes walked with Trance.  
  
Out of blue, Harper was very homesick. He closed his eyes and only opened them again when he felt Lim's tug on his arm.  
  
"Come on, it's totally wicked," Lim said, and he took Harper towards one of the inconspicuous entrances in the courtyard wall.  
  
When Tyr had a chance to look up from the charts and check to see how Harper was doing, the boy was gone, and Tyr wondered when he would realize that Harper never obeyed instructions.  
  
--  
  
Harper was tired and aching, but it didn't matter how many times he protested, Lim didn't stop leading him up and down through the estate's impressive kitchens until they had found Panga, who had gone back to her own quarters and was looking sadly out the window when they entered.  
  
Then the excitable boy had led both of them, arms linked, one on each side, out the estate on the opposite side of the forest and ocean, opposite of where Harper had tried to escape earlier. He simply walked out of the building nonchalantly, chattering constantly the entire time.  
  
The heat affected Harper almost instantly, and he saw the sweat drenching down the slave garments of his companions. He started to lag almost right away, and when he did gather the strength to look up at Panga, she rolled her eyes and jerked her head at Lim, and stopped walking.  
  
"Lim, slow down. Zay's still too sick for this."  
  
"Oh, what?" Lim turned around and scowled, crossing his arms. "Come on, Zaymus. You can fool your master but you can't fool me."  
  
"Who's fooling? I'm seriously sick." Harper scowled. "It's fucking hot! How can you stand it?"  
  
"Come on, Lim." Panga went on like Harper hadn't even opened his mouth. "Let's just go back. We're going to get heat fever."  
  
"Oh, come on, you guys, you have to see this! Please? It'll be totally worth it!" Lim actually stomped his foot at the beginning of that sentence, clasping his hands and looking up at Panga with soft, impressionable eyes. "I promise, when we get back home I'll make you both coconut ice."  
  
"Fine," She had said, and Harper had sighed, but while Lim skipped ahead, still talking on and on about nothing, she lingered back with him.  
  
After a long while, she said: "Do you need help?"  
  
"With what?"  
  
"Walking. Can you use that leg at all?"  
  
"No."  
  
"No, you can't use that leg, or no you don't need help?"  
  
"No to both," He smiled up at her, but the effect was lost with his sweaty, red, still-bruised face. "I have a crutch, I'm fine. It's just..it's hot. Is all."  
  
"It gets hot during the day, we're not..we shouldn't be out this close to noon. I'm going to burn." She sighed, and Harper looked at her sidelong, but it wasn't a pouty, self-centered sigh. "My mistress is kind, though. She won't care. Will the General?"  
  
"Huh?" It took Harper a while to remember he was supposed to be playing the part of slave. "Oh. Well.I'm sick. So."  
  
"Yeah," Panga undid her hair and ran her hands through it a little, and Harper was struck by the void blackness of it, and she quickly straightened it did it up again, all without taking her eyes off the beaten path in the grass before her.  
  
The rolling fields stretched on forever in all directions. On the horizon, one could see the low homesteads of farmers, and their fenced off chunks of land. On the other side, behind them, was Amasai's impressive estate and beyond that, glimmering, past a small forest of dark green trees, was the ocean.  
  
The vegetation on this side of the estate was sparse, sandy, sharp blades of grass here and there, and very low shrubby bushes. A low, twisted, misshapen tree spotted the land here and there, and Harper thought he saw a pride of golden animals in the distance, but it was too far to tell. The heat rising off the land made everything wavy. Harper lagged behind even more.  
  
"Come on, you guys!" Lim called from where he knelt by a low tree a distance from them. Eventually they caught up and Lim wrung his hands giddily, staring down at the little hole dug in at the base of the tree.  
  
It was full of four, scrambling, mewling little animals, something that looked but didn't quite sound like kittens.  
  
"Oh." Panga let out a low sound, barely audible, and probably not voluntary. Harper collapsed in the tree's shade and sighed, not caring about the little animals at all.  
  
"Aren't they cool? I found them last night when I went looking for my ball." Lim held one up to Panga, and she took it in her hands, her unattractive green eyes unblinking.  
  
Harper watched the kitten scramble about on Panga's undelighted hand with disinterest, too tired and hot and sick to care.  
  
"Do you think my master will let me keep them? In the kitchen or something?"  
  
"I don't think so," Panga said, not unkindly. "They must have a mother or something."  
  
Their mother was mauled by the bigger cats out here, Harper heard a familiar voice. He looked up, snapping his eyes open, confused. Trance?  
  
Geez, it was hot! He must be mental-miraging or something. He was tired.  
  
"I think their mother must've abandoned them," Lim said. "Well, I don't care. I'm taking at least one." He looked up at Harper. "Do you want one, Zay? I bet your master would let you have a pet."  
  
Harper was going to answer, but instead, he coughed. He curled up a little in the shade and thought about having a nap here.  
  
"Are you all right, Zay?" Lim asked, but he was more concerned with the mewling kitten in his hands.  
  
"M'fine," Harper said tiredly.  
  
"Well, if you guys are taking one, I'm going to take one," Panga said, and Harper managed to crack his reddened eyes open to look at her. "I think I'll name this one Kusmin."  
  
You could name yours after me! Harper could almost hear Trance say, and he almost smiled, until he realized just how delusional that was. He struggled to sit up, but right after he saw the most amazing thing- Panga smiling gently at her kitten- the heat got the better of him and he passed out with a hard *thud*.  
  
---  
  
When Harper woke up, he was cradled in Tyr's arms, hot beyond uncomfortable, and whimpering like mad. It felt like his skull was imploding. He wanted to die.  
  
"Disrespectful, stubborn," He barley heard Tyr rambling. He saw the dizzingly blue sky spinning above Tyr's dark head. In the distance, Lim's protesting voice could be heard backgrounding Okasha's angry reprimands. The world refused to stop whirling. Harper almost retched but he really didn't want to do that all over Tyr.  
  
Tyr grumbled something about impossible companions and ridiculous expansionism, but Harper couldn't follow his train of thought. His quarantine room was remarkably cool and breezy, and Harper sighed audibly when they got inside there, the oppressive heat of the outside finally lifted. His skin was already blistering anew. He was having a hard time keeping his eyes open.  
  
Tyr undid the complicated ties of Harper's garment and sandals, and helped him out of the virgin white gown with surprising gentleness, laying Harper's abused, burned body down in the pristine sheets, propping his splinted leg up again. He was about to go off on another tirade of verbal abuse when he realized Harper had already fallen into a fitful sleep.  
  
The Nietzschean rubbed his face and leaned his elbows on the billow white pallet, and allowed himself a moment to rest and think and listen to Harper's laboured breathing. Then they would be expecting him in the dining hall for the noon meal.  
  
He gaze Harper one last lingering, almost protective, gaze before he closed the door on the cool white room. He almost stepped on the underfoot slaves who were waiting outside.  
  
The boy, Okasha's servant, stuttered and wrung his hands nervously. The girl, Geeia's servant, who was holding a small bowl full of what could have passed as ice cream, rolled her eyes and looked right up into Tyr's eyes, defiantly.  
  
"Lim promised that he'd bring Zay coconut ice," She said, simply.  
  
Tyr didn't respond right away, there was something in her unattractive green eyes that demanded his full attention. "He's asleep." He said, finally. The girl nodded. She tugged at the boy's gown a little and they scampered off, silently.  
  
Tyr took another moment to gather his thoughts, curse his luck, and then he walked down to the dining hall. 


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four  
  
"Fine. We'll go over this again." The menacing, dark, well, let's face it, bitch said with a sigh.  
  
Barrister Wilkinson answered with his own long suffering sigh. "We won't go over it again. We've been over it a thousand times already. You're not going to get any more new information right now."  
  
"That's exactly the problem, isn't it!" Beka thought that the tall, angry woman was supposed to be a prosecutor of some kind. The blonde pilot's lip curled up a little as she cocked her head. What a bitch. Really. "If your client isn't offering us any new information, this is a complete waste of time." Ms. Fowler, the prosecutor, started gathering up her papers and files in a flurry. The lab technician who had hired her rolled his eyes and got up from the table, ready for their swift departure.  
  
"You had better get your story straight," The prosecutor glared acidly at Beka, "Or they are going to put you away for a long time."  
  
Beka only looked up at Ms. Fowler serenely, sucking slowly on the small malt chocolate candies she had been sneaking from the shared bowl on the table.  
  
With one last huff, Ms. Fowler left the room, the lab technician trailing in her angry wake.  
  
Wilkinson sighed, a heavy, weighted sigh. Beka snuck another malt chocolate.  
  
"I'm sorry for that," The barrister said, looking older than she was told he was. "She's impossible. Had a hate-on for me since high school."  
  
"No worries," Beka said, flicking her hair slightly. She blinked a little, forgetting momentarily about the heavy bags under her eyes, about the nightmares that plagued her.  
  
"We're going as quickly as we can," He went on, his eyes still closed to the soft, polluted light that fell in sideways through the shuttered window. "To get you out of here. Out of that lab. It's horrible conditions to hold someone."  
  
"I've been through worse," Beka said casually. Wilkinson opened his eyes and regarded her. "Seriously, I have. I'm tough." She narrowed weary blue eyes slightly. "Don't you believe me?"  
  
"I believe you." He said, soft brown eyes unblinking. "I have to. Don't I." It wasn't a question.  
  
Beka smiled weakly as he opened the door and waited for her to exit before him. The guard was still standing outside, sullenly, waiting, not particularly big or heavy. He had, however, some impressive weaponry hanging from his belt, and Beka's neck still stung from it's tease on her neck at her first escape attempt. She had tried twice after that, despite her knowledge in it's futility. She was stubborn.  
  
Beka suddenly missed Harper very much, and a familiar deep ache nestled into her stomach.  
  
"I have a room set aside and everything," Wilkinson went on as the light handcuffs were fastened around her wrists again. The plain, loose white plastic garments nestled stiffly around her as they walked down the long, plain corridors to her lab cell. "A few more days, I promise. I know it's taking long, but I have to get the papers in order. They're.they're not being cooperative."  
  
"I know," Beka said, unsmiling, as she stepped inside the door of the lab. "I.it's fine. Don't stress about it. I don't have anywhere to go, anyway."  
  
Wilkinson smiled sadly and held out one weary arm, stopping the door before it the guard could shut it. "Three more days. Tops. Then you'll be in a real room with real meals and everything."  
  
"Sounds like heaven." Beka smiled again, and it didn't reach her eyes, and she shifted uncomfortably, her bare feet cold against the lab floor. "You.could they find.what I asked for?"  
  
The last time Beka had seen Dylan, he had been impaled on a large shard of one of the slipfighter's broken seats. Then they had stormed her and taken her away. And here she was.  
  
"I have the ashes," Wilkinson said bluntly, not unkindly.  
  
Beka blinked and looked away. "He.they're."  
  
"When you're out of here, would you like to have a ceremony for him?"  
  
"Yeah. Yeah, thanks." Beka looked up again, trying to smile, the uncertain little girl long gone.  
  
Barrister Wilkinson smiled and nodded again, closing the door ever so softly. "Everything's going to be fine, Beka." He said. "Get some sleep."  
  
With that, he closed the drab grey door and Beka could hear his soft footsteps down the hall.  
  
The lab was dark again, with only a few lights on the sides over desks light up, glowing eerily in the corner of Beka's eyes. Well. At least she had windows, even if they were small.  
  
The windows were low in the wall, dirty, the glass cold to the touch. The lab was located in a skyscraper, hundreds of stories off the ground- at least, that's what she could gather. She spent most of the day huddled in one corner, ignoring the technicians as they went about their work ignoring her, trying to suppress the uneasy quivering in her stomach, trying to forget the sound of Trance gasping and the horrifying beauty of her last slipstream jump. Beka would stare down at the city, big and dirty, at the thousands, millions of hovercars that sped past in an hour, the changing billboards and neon ads, scrolling words in a kanji system that looked vaguely familiar.  
  
It had taken her a long time to get used to the accent and.offish vernacular that these people spoke with. She reacted with violence, at first, of course. They had just as hard a time understanding her, so they locked her up in this lab until they figured out that she really was sort of harmless, outnumbered and without weapons. They still wanted to make sure she wasn't part of some bigger external threat.  
  
The city now was dark, black, light up on the edges by neon lights and flashing billboards, headlights and taillights and reflective clothing. It glowed from the center, and when Beka couldn't sleep she would huddle in the same corner and stare at the glowing center of the massive city, far below her, until she got lost in it's murky yellowness and snapped back, suddenly engulfed with the same fear that had spiked in her when the Andromeda was.  
  
There was a glass mug on the counter, the counter that was usually spotless and immaculate. A scrap of paper lay next to it, scribbled with a message in a runic, almost ancient looking script. Beka could read it, anyway.  
  
Missed you today, Bek. It read. Thought you'd be done by the time I got in, but I guess those suits are even longer-winded than I imagined.  
  
Beka allowed herself a genuine smile. At least, in Casey, she had one honest friend here.  
  
Barrister Wilkinson is awesome, tho, Casey went on in her note. He's gotten me out of more trouble than you can imagine being in. Believe me. I hope I'll get to see you tomorrow, we can chat then. I left you some herbal tea, it'll help you sleep. Use the Bunsen burner to heat some water. Later- Casey.  
  
There was a small blackish teabag inside the mug and Beka filled a large beaker with water, turning on a small flame and allowing it to boil. She stared at the flame and wrapped her skinny arms around herself, let out a long, shaky breath, and tried not to think of the Andromeda.  
  
---  
  
The stucco white corridor and courtyard outside his room looked so much more spectacular now that he wasn't so fevered. A small smile almost graced Harper's face when Tyr carried him out into the open hallway, a light breeze caressing his not-too-sweaty hair, ruffling through his breezy white slave garment.  
  
"Remember what I told you, boy," Tyr almost growled.  
  
"What?" Harper retorted, irritated.  
  
"About being humble. Not making a scene. You're already making a fool of me."  
  
Harper scowled and, without realising it, rested his head against Tyr's shoulder, still perilously tired. "I'm still sick, you know." He said softly.  
  
"I know. But we do what we must to survive." He propped Harper up a little, more violently than was necessary, and Harper bit back a complaint. "That is Lord Amasai," Tyr pointed quickly at a man standing in the centre of the group of dark people congregating in the center of the courtyard, a plethora of pale ghosts lurking in the shadows, literally. "He is the people's elected leader of this country." Tyr said the sentence with disdain, like the mundane politics of such a primitive planet were beneath him. "Casiija has several enemies, mostly to the north. Which, incidentally, is where they raided all their slaves from." Harper would've flinched if he had the energy. Tyr sounded more and more angry every minute he had to spend in this distasteful rule of slave-master, and he sounded like he was trying very hard to keep a tight rein on it.  
  
"Elected leader?" Harper tried to keep up. After his exhausting breakfast with Lim, he wasn't up for an entire day of waiting around on Tyr. Bleugh.  
  
"There is a King, who lives in a palace in the town not far from here. He is only a child." Surprisingly, Tyr didn't spit it out this time. "Somebody has always had control of the land in his lieu, since he was a baby, when his father died. It was another lord before Amasai. A few months later, he was murdered. And Lord Amasai has been leader ever since."  
  
Oh.  
  
"How is that elected?"  
  
Tyr sighed and, if it were possible, rolled his eyes. "Don't even bother worrying about it. It's none of your concern."  
  
Harper's lip curled a little at this. While it was true that the inner scandals of politics were probably the last thing he should be concerning himself with - especially when he still forgot not to look his betters in the eye - he hated to be treated like such a simpleton.  
  
Tyr stopped and stepped towards the edge of the corridor, leaning so that Harper was almost sitting on the banister overlooking the courtyard. "That is Lady Geeia." He said, pointing again at a tall, elegant lady in the centre of the proceedings. "She is Okasha's twin sister. She is very much.like him."  
  
"She likes you," Harper said with just a hint of teasing in his voice.  
  
Something that could have been a sigh left Tyr's body. "So the slave gossip has already reached you," He said wearily. "It's.purely physical."  
  
Harper laughed. "What the hell else did you think it was?"  
  
Tyr glared up at Harper. "She's not going to hinder our leaving this place." He said with conviction.  
  
"I know," Harper said softly, dropping his gaze and staring at his splint and swollen foot. "I was just.having some fun."  
  
There was a long, weighted pause. "Good," Tyr said, eventually, and Harper wondered what that could mean.  
  
There was an outside staircase that they took down into the courtyard, huge, green, ethereal blossoms coming up to greet them, pink and yellow flowers blooming and fragrant and lighting up the courtyard with colour.  
  
The sky was a staggering blue and went on forever, and endless stretch punctuated only by the quivering white sun high in the center.  
  
As soon as Tyr stepped out of the shade of the white stucco walls, Harper felt like he was going to die. Sunlight hit his skin directly and he screwed his eyes shut, burying his head again, unashamedly, into Tyr's dark shoulder. His entire body spiked out in gooseflesh in the heat, hot shivers, he stared sweating almost instantaneously and he honestly didn't know how long he could hold out. He had gotten used to the heat radiating off the shaded white stucco, but this was unbearable.  
  
It was the sort of heat you could see rising off the ground and on the skin of others, the heat you could breathe into your body and wear on your back. Drawing from experience, Harper knew if he spent more than five minutes in this direct sunlight, he was going to be felled for a long time coming.  
  
"I know," Tyr said comfortingly as Harper whimpered unconsciously. He turned quickly and Harper found himself in the starkly cool shade, sighing contentedly. "Remember to stay out of the sun. In your condition, it will harm you greatly."  
  
Harper almost gave Tyr a snide remark, but he looked at the older man's weary, commanding face and bit the inside of his cheek. He sighed and carefully leaned against the cool white wall so he didn't fall right over.  
  
"I know you are tired," Tyr continued. "I want nothing more than for you to heal properly so we can leave this godforsaken rock. I do not want you to exert yourself too much while we are out here."  
  
"Well, if that's the case, couldn't you just-" Whatever Harper was about to suggest, it was cut off when Tyr clamped a hand down over the boy's mouth.  
  
His eyes were wide with warning as he muttered: "What did I tell you? Silence."  
  
Tyr dropped his grip of Harper's mouth and the boy bit his lip a little, and then dropped his gaze, if only to stop staring into those troubled dark eyes, trying to forget the feel of the Nietzschean's hand splayed across his face.  
  
Representative Okasha had come up behind Tyr at some point, with is sister Lady Geeia. He made a big show of introducing Harper as "The General's spoilt little pet," and the Lady absolutely loved it.  
  
"Oh, he's adorable!" She said, pinching Harper's cheeks. Pinching! Harper, at Tyr's pantomimed cue, smiled weakly and tried to look away as quickly as possible. "And how do you like your master, little one?"  
  
"He's shy," Tyr supplied again, thankfully.  
  
"Aww.leave it to you, General Anasazi, to take such a shy little thing under your protection."  
  
Oh, this was too good. Harper risked a glance through lowered lids at Tyr's uncomfortable reaction.  
  
"That's.kind of you to say." Tyr took one involuntary step back from the wealthy woman's gaze.  
  
Representative Okasha broke up the uncomfortable scenario when he laughed heartily and presented Harper with a crude crutch he had just cut down from one of the trees in the courtyard. He made a show of the bruises he obtained on his arms and back when he fell out of the tree, amid his sister's giggles.  
  
"This is so you no longer have to burden your master carrying you around like a black prince," He said, jovially, not realising just how much his words offended the engineer.  
  
"Th-thanks," Harper said slowly, remembering that he was supposed to be shy, looking determinedly at the ground and not at the Representative's face.  
  
"Polite, albeit spoiled." Okasha said with laughter in his voice. "Come, Tyr, the Lord Amasai wishes to speak to us." He said the state leader's name with just the slightest hint of bitterness. Harper barely heard it, so intent was he with studying the green, green grass that stuck out from under his flimsy sandal.  
  
Tyr gave Harper one last warning, not unfriendly glance, and followed the Representative and his sister slowly to where Lord Amasai was seated near a grove of trees with several other highly decorated individuals.  
  
Lord Amasai was the colour of rum in coffee, and his skin shone in the heat but did not gleam with sweat. He was by no means a big man, but emanated a power in his slenderness and impressive height. He was just as tall as Tyr, if not taller- Harper couldn't judge from this distance.  
  
Panga, her black-black hair swept back into a loose half-ponytail, was laying a wide chart over a table on the grass. So pale was her skin that Harper couldn't tell where she ended and her slave garment began. She looked like a little pearl rolled in from of the ocean, nestled into the green, pink, and yellow courtyard, outnumbered and dwarfed by her dark counterparts in their lavish costumes.  
  
She looked up, as if she felt Harpers eyes on hers, and looked back at him for just a second. He almost thought she was going to give him a friendly smile but there was something else there- pity? -and then she turned back to her work, working her jaw unconsciously like she had just seen something that disturbed her.  
  
Then Harper made the mistake of letting his gaze wander to the whisky eyes of Lord Amasai.  
  
So startled was the skinny Earthen engineer that he didn't realize he was committing the previously proclaimed grave offense of looking directly into the nobleman's face. Lord Amasai smiled faintly, his eyes hard and bitter, and a shiver ran down Harper's spine. It wasn't until Lord Amasai blinked, almost laughingly, that Harper realized what he had been doing and dropped his gaze to the ground, again.  
  
It occurred to Harper that he had a crick in his neck from staring at the ground. He sighed miserably and rubbed his neck ineffectually.  
  
"Hey!" A friendly voice spooked him out of his already spooked reverie, and he looked up to see Lim in the shade next to him, playing with his fingertips in the same way he had half an hour before. "What are you doing right now?"  
  
"Standing here talking to you, why?" Harper was suddenly very tired, if it was possible on top of the exhaustion he felt before.  
  
Lim rolled his eyes melodramatically. "Don't be a smart ass. I mean does your master need you for anything? Because I'm done with the dishes and there's something I want to show you."  
  
Harper hazarded a glance back to the small congregation near the grove of trees, and thankfully the Lord with the hard whisky eyes wasn't looking at him this time. "I don't know," he said truthfully. "I'm still sick. I'm just supposed to stay here."  
  
"Oh, where's the fun in that?" Lim went around to Harper's left side, where the crutch wasn't, and took his arm the way Beka sometimes walked with Trance.  
  
Out of blue, Harper was very homesick. He closed his eyes and only opened them again when he felt Lim's tug on his arm.  
  
"Come on, it's totally wicked," Lim said, and he took Harper towards one of the inconspicuous entrances in the courtyard wall.  
  
When Tyr had a chance to look up from the charts and check to see how Harper was doing, the boy was gone, and Tyr wondered when he would realize that Harper never obeyed instructions.  
  
--  
  
Harper was tired and aching, but it didn't matter how many times he protested, Lim didn't stop leading him up and down through the estate's impressive kitchens until they had found Panga, who had gone back to her own quarters and was looking sadly out the window when they entered.  
  
Then the excitable boy had led both of them, arms linked, one on each side, out the estate on the opposite side of the forest and ocean, opposite of where Harper had tried to escape earlier. He simply walked out of the building nonchalantly, chattering constantly the entire time.  
  
The heat affected Harper almost instantly, and he saw the sweat drenching down the slave garments of his companions. He started to lag almost right away, and when he did gather the strength to look up at Panga, she rolled her eyes and jerked her head at Lim, and stopped walking.  
  
"Lim, slow down. Zay's still too sick for this."  
  
"Oh, what?" Lim turned around and scowled, crossing his arms. "Come on, Zaymus. You can fool your master but you can't fool me."  
  
"Who's fooling? I'm seriously sick." Harper scowled. "It's fucking hot! How can you stand it?"  
  
"Come on, Lim." Panga went on like Harper hadn't even opened his mouth. "Let's just go back. We're going to get heat fever."  
  
"Oh, come on, you guys, you have to see this! Please? It'll be totally worth it!" Lim actually stomped his foot at the beginning of that sentence, clasping his hands and looking up at Panga with soft, impressionable eyes. "I promise, when we get back home I'll make you both coconut ice."  
  
"Fine," She had said, and Harper had sighed, but while Lim skipped ahead, still talking on and on about nothing, she lingered back with him.  
  
After a long while, she said: "Do you need help?"  
  
"With what?"  
  
"Walking. Can you use that leg at all?"  
  
"No."  
  
"No, you can't use that leg, or no you don't need help?"  
  
"No to both," He smiled up at her, but the effect was lost with his sweaty, red, still-bruised face. "I have a crutch, I'm fine. It's just..it's hot. Is all."  
  
"It gets hot during the day, we're not..we shouldn't be out this close to noon. I'm going to burn." She sighed, and Harper looked at her sidelong, but it wasn't a pouty, self-centered sigh. "My mistress is kind, though. She won't care. Will the General?"  
  
"Huh?" It took Harper a while to remember he was supposed to be playing the part of slave. "Oh. Well.I'm sick. So."  
  
"Yeah," Panga undid her hair and ran her hands through it a little, and Harper was struck by the void blackness of it, and she quickly straightened it did it up again, all without taking her eyes off the beaten path in the grass before her.  
  
The rolling fields stretched on forever in all directions. On the horizon, one could see the low homesteads of farmers, and their fenced off chunks of land. On the other side, behind them, was Amasai's impressive estate and beyond that, glimmering, past a small forest of dark green trees, was the ocean.  
  
The vegetation on this side of the estate was sparse, sandy, sharp blades of grass here and there, and very low shrubby bushes. A low, twisted, misshapen tree spotted the land here and there, and Harper thought he saw a pride of golden animals in the distance, but it was too far to tell. The heat rising off the land made everything wavy. Harper lagged behind even more.  
  
"Come on, you guys!" Lim called from where he knelt by a low tree a distance from them. Eventually they caught up and Lim wrung his hands giddily, staring down at the little hole dug in at the base of the tree.  
  
It was full of four, scrambling, mewling little animals, something that looked but didn't quite sound like kittens.  
  
"Oh." Panga let out a low sound, barely audible, and probably not voluntary. Harper collapsed in the tree's shade and sighed, not caring about the little animals at all.  
  
"Aren't they cool? I found them last night when I went looking for my ball." Lim held one up to Panga, and she took it in her hands, her unattractive green eyes unblinking.  
  
Harper watched the kitten scramble about on Panga's undelighted hand with disinterest, too tired and hot and sick to care.  
  
"Do you think my master will let me keep them? In the kitchen or something?"  
  
"I don't think so," Panga said, not unkindly. "They must have a mother or something."  
  
Their mother was mauled by the bigger cats out here, Harper heard a familiar voice. He looked up, snapping his eyes open, confused. Trance?  
  
Geez, it was hot! He must be mental-miraging or something. He was tired.  
  
"I think their mother must've abandoned them," Lim said. "Well, I don't care. I'm taking at least one." He looked up at Harper. "Do you want one, Zay? I bet your master would let you have a pet."  
  
Harper was going to answer, but instead, he coughed. He curled up a little in the shade and thought about having a nap here.  
  
"Are you all right, Zay?" Lim asked, but he was more concerned with the mewling kitten in his hands.  
  
"M'fine," Harper said tiredly.  
  
"Well, if you guys are taking one, I'm going to take one," Panga said, and Harper managed to crack his reddened eyes open to look at her. "I think I'll name this one Kusmin."  
  
You could name yours after me! Harper could almost hear Trance say, and he almost smiled, until he realized just how delusional that was. He struggled to sit up, but right after he saw the most amazing thing- Panga smiling gently at her kitten- the heat got the better of him and he passed out with a hard *thud*.  
  
---  
  
When Harper woke up, he was cradled in Tyr's arms, hot beyond uncomfortable, and whimpering like mad. It felt like his skull was imploding. He wanted to die.  
  
"Disrespectful, stubborn," He barley heard Tyr rambling. He saw the dizzingly blue sky spinning above Tyr's dark head. In the distance, Lim's protesting voice could be heard backgrounding Okasha's angry reprimands. The world refused to stop whirling. Harper almost retched but he really didn't want to do that all over Tyr.  
  
Tyr grumbled something about impossible companions and ridiculous expansionism, but Harper couldn't follow his train of thought. His quarantine room was remarkably cool and breezy, and Harper sighed audibly when they got inside there, the oppressive heat of the outside finally lifted. His skin was already blistering anew. He was having a hard time keeping his eyes open.  
  
Tyr undid the complicated ties of Harper's garment and sandals, and helped him out of the virgin white gown with surprising gentleness, laying Harper's abused, burned body down in the pristine sheets, propping his splinted leg up again. He was about to go off on another tirade of verbal abuse when he realized Harper had already fallen into a fitful sleep.  
  
The Nietzschean rubbed his face and leaned his elbows on the billow white pallet, and allowed himself a moment to rest and think and listen to Harper's laboured breathing. Then they would be expecting him in the dining hall for the noon meal.  
  
He gaze Harper one last lingering, almost protective, gaze before he closed the door on the cool white room. He almost stepped on the underfoot slaves who were waiting outside.  
  
The boy, Okasha's servant, stuttered and wrung his hands nervously. The girl, Geeia's servant, who was holding a small bowl full of what could have passed as ice cream, rolled her eyes and looked right up into Tyr's eyes, defiantly.  
  
"Lim promised that he'd bring Zay coconut ice," She said, simply.  
  
Tyr didn't respond right away, there was something in her unattractive green eyes that demanded his full attention. "He's asleep." He said, finally. The girl nodded. She tugged at the boy's gown a little and they scampered off, silently.  
  
Tyr took another moment to gather his thoughts, curse his luck, and then he walked down to the dining hall. 


	5. Chapter 5

+Chapter Five+  
  
It could hardly be called sleep.  
  
Harper made more noise that night than he usually did in waking, and given Harper's gift for nonsensical ramblings, that was saying something. Every minute dream-movement was acted out by shaky limbs, every frantic fumbling caught Harper up in his fever-drenched sheets. He spoke a lot, but not clearly enough that one could hear what he was saying, were one to listen.  
  
Through the nightmare that disturbed his dreams, Harper relived everything that happened to him way back when as vividly as the first time. Even more vivid than the first time around, if that were possible.  
  
--  
  
Seamus' father first took him to the sewers when he was five. His mother had fallen ill and could not go to work, and the family had a debt to pay to some of the capos- mudfoots like themselves that were given authority over the rest in the refugee camp by the overseer Nietzscheans. Seamus had lay awake in the corner of their crowded tent at night, pretending to be asleep, listening to his young parents argue in whispers in the darkness. His mother, who was seventeen, gaunt and pale, had a look of defiance and disgust as his father tried to persuade her.  
  
There was something in the young man's eyes as well, a sort of troubled defeat. In retrospect, Seamus would never see the carefree, jovial, brilliant young man that had been his father again. All that was left was this stunted, tired old dotard in a young man's body.  
  
So here he was, five years old, tripping over his own feet to keep up with his father's stride down the dark sewers of Quincy.  
  
They weren't Nietzschean, the men they went to meet. They were mudfoots, too. They must have been capos.  
  
He was too young, too tired to follow the conversation. All he really remembered was the pained look on his father's face, the defeated sweat dripping off his brow.  
  
He remembered looking up, between his father and the two capos, watching the fear and defeat radiate off his father in waves.  
  
The young man cringed and sputtered and wouldn't look at his little son. "I don't...I mean I can't...you have to understand that I'm only doing this because-"  
  
"Like I fucking care." One of the capos said, sneering a little, so skinny he looked like he was going to snap under the weight of his thin sweater.  
  
Seamus' father grasped his shoulder carefully, his hand shaking ever so slightly. "Shay," He almost-whispered. "I need you to do something. For Mommy and me."  
  
And, sure, the first time it hurt. Be he got used to it. Afterwards, they'd always give him some industrial glue solvent.  
  
--  
  
Harper woke up and for a little while he didn't know where he was, it was dark and cool and he thought he would hear the ocean somewhere in the background, but he didn't feel like he was dirtbound for a surfing trip. Usually after a day of surfing he was worn out and aching in a different way, a better way. He usually wore sunscreen, too, he might be stubborn but he wasn't an idiot.  
  
Jesus. Ouch.  
  
He got up slowly, painfully, and almost collapsed right back down the low billowy pallet. His right leg hurt like a bitch, and he eventually stopped trying to move it.  
  
He edged to the foot of the bed, still sitting sullenly, wincingly. Harper hardly noticed the chain on his good leg; he felt his way up to a standing position, leaning against one wall. He was naked. He ran his hands down burnt flesh and relieved himself, wincing.  
  
It was too dark to notice the blood in his urine. He collapsed back down on the blood, trying not to weep, and fell back into the clutches of his past.  
  
--  
  
Tyr was still awake well into the night.  
  
He had a room in a higher part of the estate, built on the side of where the courtyard and servants' quarters were. It was big, and lavishly furnished, with rich dark colours. The high wooden bed was covered with many quilts and woven blankets, the walls were hung with tapestries of spectacular sceneries.  
  
He lay on his side, his hair splayed out over the pillows, staring out the wide windows at the unsettling large white moon. There was a spacious, luxurious balcony outside his window doors; the ocean breeze played with the silk curtains casually. The moon hung low in the sky, pure virgin white, reflected in the ocean's waves.  
  
He couldn't sleep.  
  
He closed his eyes. The moonlight is too bright, he told himself. But there was something comforting in that light, something innocent and virginal and familiar. A shining white light from the deep black space that had become his home.  
  
Home.  
  
Tyr fought down the feelings of guilt and depression. He didn't need anybody else. He didn't need the crew of the Andromeda, he would survive on his own. The only reason he hadn't found a way off this rock already was because leaving Harper in his condition would have made Tyr no better than bastard beta Dragons.  
  
Yes.  
  
A big dark fist balled up pristine crimson sheets and Tyr leaned over, curling up more than he usually did in his sleep.  
  
He wasn't worried about the boy.  
  
He really wasn't!  
  
Harper had been through worse. He had survived death sentences that Tyr had been spared from. And Tyr had already risked his own life for the boy- if it came to it, he wouldn't do it again.  
  
Tyr's face darkened at the thought, subconsciously, and his brow furrowed. He wouldn't. He'd take the opportunity to find a way off-planet.  
  
If there was a way off-planet.  
  
But he would have to stop thinking like that. He had survived on mere dreams before.  
  
He was sure Harper had, too.  
  
Tyr sighed, breathlessly, almost inaudibly. He had agreed to fight a war for these people. A war, in his opinion, that was useless, greedy, expansionist, and a threat to everyone, including himself. And the only way out was to will Harper back to health and tell them he was retiring to his mountain estate, wherever the hell that was, and hope the real General Anasazi wouldn't show up. On that subject, however, he was strangely serene. He didn't have the knowledge that the real General Anasazi had died. No one did. He had resolved himself to simply killing the real General if he ever found him, preferrably before Lord Amasai did. It wasn't the most distasteful thing he'd ever had to do. Besides, the General had a reputation of killing mostly the women and children of his conquered. He was obviously a beta at best.  
  
But before they could do anything, Harper would have to get better.  
  
Damn that boy for always finding trouble! It would be a blessing if he would just make up his mind on whether or not to simply die and leave Tyr be. But no-  
  
He wasn't worried about the boy. He wasn't. He was worried about himself.  
  
Regardless, Tyr still didn't sleep that night, staring up at the pale white virgin moon that hung so solemnly low in the black starry sky.  
  
--  
  
In his dreams, in the past, in the sewers of Quincy, Seamus' childhood was stolen from him in the way that was still unique in the world of abject poverty, but not unique enough that it was a surprise to anyone else who knew.  
  
It was the sort of growing up that children in the mines and the factories were, sometimes, spared. It was the sort of growing up that would have made Seamus jaded and soulless and dead, if he remembered it. Even after he left Earth, he still had a bitterness and deep-rooted passion for his home planet, but it was for different reasons, reasons typical to any other Earther. This particular situation was blurred and lost and dissolved away by the acidy burn of sniffed glue, and Rave. Which was just as well, because Seamus would have gone insane much earlier if not for Rave and glue. Rave and glue. Rave, Trance, Sparky, and glue. Surfing. Spaceships. Hoverboards. Clear blue oceans and sandy moon deserts that he would, at one point, rip across in banged-together buggies. Drinking and weed and dancing and girls and boys and Beka. The Commonwealth. And the Maru. And the Andr...  
  
Oh, God. He had so much to live for, once.  
  
Not when he was six. Or it would have been a lot worse. When he was six, the small burning baggie of glue solvent at the end of each ordeal in the shadows of the sewers was all he had to look forward to, and he took it, happily.  
  
He shared his glue with Rave, that was one of Rave's stipulations.  
  
Rave was nine. A big kid. One of the older boys that didn't go out of his way to make Seamus' life hell. Before they relocated closer to the city, Seamus didn't have any friends besides Rave. But Rave found him in the sewers once, after he had been with the capos, when he was waiting for his father to come back and get him. Seamus sat shivering, his clothes torn, his body bleeding and probably broken. And Rave was there.  
  
"You don't have to do it next time," He said. He was older, sure, but he still spoke like a child, his voice soft and slightly accented, his eyes glazed and dull in the darkness.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"I'll do it. I'll come find you next time, and I'll do it."  
  
"Why?"  
  
Rave shrugged. "Just nice, I guess. But share your glue with me, okay?"  
  
--  
  
Tyr came to Harper's room the next morning before any of the other slaves did, and found the boy tossing and turning on soiled sheets, his skin red and raw and pussy and boiling, a stinking stain of blood and urine on the pristine, stucco white wall opposite the bed.  
  
His immediate reaction was to draw back, away from the stench of death and disease, the spores of waste and rupture that threatened to choke his lungs. He didn't envy Harper for a minute, not like he ever did before, and his first instincts were to put the boy out of his misery, leave this place, fend for himself without the burden of a diseased child.  
  
But there was something else, something more, holding him in the doorway of that small white room in a strange estate on some backwater planet. Something virginal and pale like the moonlight, something tender and a little sad. It was a feeling that Tyr hadn't experienced before and it disturbed him. If it were a creature, he would have wanted to kill it, or at least lock it away someplace where it wouldn't endanger him. But it wasn't a creature. It lived inside him, in his heart. So he'd have to learn to adapt to it.  
  
"Is he very sick?" The two children had come up behind Tyr so quietly that even with his superior hearing he hadn't noticed them. He hid his surprise and turned slowly, and there was Okasha's boy, standing with a tray with a simple arrangement of food that couldn't possibly help Harper heal. "Zay? Is he going to be all right?" The boy asked timidly, shaggy dark hair framing impossibly wide eyes.  
  
Behind him a little ways stood the girl, Geeia's servant, leaning against the opposite wall almost insolently, her unattractive green eyes boring a defiant hole right into Tyr.  
  
"He has not improved since last night," Was all Tyr said.  
  
The boy nodded, a little sadly. He reverently held out the tray for Tyr to take. "I will...I will get my master. He...I know the healers don't know what's wrong with Zay, but my master...you just can't tell anyone, okay?"  
  
Tyr nodded, not letting his confusion show. The boy nodded back, vigorously, and ran off down the hall, like a kitten after a butterfly.  
  
The girl didn't move. But something in her unattractive green eyes changed when she looked at Tyr.  
  
Hate?  
  
--  
  
The next time Seamus' father took him to the sewers, two days later, Rave almost didn't come and Seamus was almost very mad. But Rave did show up, after his father had left, after the capos stood there looking at him with desperate, lecherous look. Rave smiled engagingly.  
  
He was a slim boy, taller than Seamus, with thin black hair and an exotic face, darker than anyone Seamus had seen in Massachusetts. Occasionally slavers would go through town with bodies raided from the south, dark and tan and black and exotic children and women who looked like Rave.  
  
Seamus didn't even have to do anything when Rave arrived, the attention of the capos was drawn towards him almost inexplicably. They were so close when they did it, when they tore the rags off him, when they pushed him into the slag and sludge, that Seamus figured he must've been a ghost to them. He stood there and watched, somehow, his young child's eyes watched what they did to Rave, what they did in their pathetic, unloved desperation to a child who writhed and arched and, if it had been Seamus, would've cried.  
  
Rave didn't cry. He stared up at the top of the dark sewers, his eyes adult and dead and angry all at once. Seamus leaned his little head to the side, confused, so close he should've been able to feel the pressure of the capo's backs and feet on his limbs.  
  
But he didn't. It was like he wasn't even there.  
  
Rave didn't make any noise, and they were done quickly; the painful, sad and quick release of those so desperate and loathsome that they would fall to this, not even the lowest common denominator.  
  
Seamus at some point realised he wasn't even watching anymore. His eyes glazed out and all he could hear was the sound of laboured breathing and flesh slapping and sweat slowly trickling down impoverished bodies.  
  
It was almost beautiful.  
  
He had to see the beauty of it. Or he would go mad.  
  
Then his father was there, kneeling in the sludge before him, anxiously, asking, softly, carefully: "Are you okay?"  
  
Seamus blinked, and there was a hot little plastic bag in his hands, and the capos were gone, and the sewers were eerily still and dark, an oppressive heat riding off the covered hot water pipes.  
  
"I'm fine, Da, it's okay."  
  
"Did they hurt you?" He asked it every time. And every time it was the same answer. Except today.  
  
"No, Da. I didn't...Rave went and-" And then he looked over his shoulder and Rave was gone, and he was standing in the spot where they had beaten the boy and stolen his soul. And he looked down on himself and his rags were torn up more than they were when he awoke that morning, and there were scars and gashes on his arms, and he was aching.  
  
But it wasn't so bad as before.  
  
--  
  
They had taken him into town. Tyr had stood there and nodded and pretended to know what the fuck they were talking about, and agreed to let them take Harper, sick and delusional, without Tyr's guidance or help or presence to stop him from being a damned idiot, and took off.  
  
Okasha had been worried, Tyr could see it in the man's face. There was a bit of sadness, too, guilt almost, but it was hidden well by the other man's joviality and good naturedness. The boy, Lim, had begged his master to come along, but Okasha had forbidden it. Town was dangerous for boys like him, he had said. Tyr had stood there and nodded agreeably, still wondering what the fuck they were talking about, and why the town would be dangerous for a boy like Lim but not Harper or the girl, Geeia's servant, who had helped wrap Harper's fevered thrashing form in new sheets and prepared the cart for him.  
  
Tyr had to stay in the estate because he had a meeting with the Lord Amasai. Now he sat in his room, alone, maps of Casiija spread out before him on one of the many deep polished wood desks they had given him.  
  
The estate, and it's corresponding town, were on the western coast, almost right in the middle. The rest of the country spread out in all directions away from the ocean vastly, covering mountains, savannah, deserts and forests. There were several small farming communities cropping up here and there. To the north lay several smaller friendly nations, and after that another stretch of water, a large inlet. Then the map ended. But after that, he was told, were the big enemies, the major unfriendly nations, who were backwards and blasphemous that the only good thing they could offer was free labour off the backs of their stolen children.  
  
Well. That was a rather pessimistic role to take. But Tyr was still having a hard time swallowing his disgust and distaste at such obviously navel- gazing beta creatures, still having a hard time wrapping his head around the long standing institution. He understood the economical benefits of bonded labour, he understood it because he had lived it once himself, he understood it because conquered tribes had always laboured under the Kodiak heel, but they were never slaves.  
  
They were never deprived their identity, their families, their heritage. Even if they were kludges.  
  
There was a stretch of mountains starting in the south, where General Anasazi apparently resided. It snaked its way eastward, twisting north a bit, cutting a curvy line across the country, separating the northwest and the southeast. In that pocket of isolated southeast lay the rebelling land. Okasha's constituency.  
  
Tyr heard a quiet rustling towards the door. Instead of raising his head in vigilance and reaching instinctively towards the knife that was no longer carried in his boot, he remained where he was, regarding the maps and notes before him. He had picked up that particular shuffling sound as that of the servants. He was probably the only master here who could hear it at all.  
  
"You can come in," He said after the entity had lingered timidly in the doorway for several minutes.  
  
He heard more than he saw the boy, Lim, draw back into himself a little bit before shuffling into the room, his feet bare of the little softwood sandals. "I...I'm sorry about Zay, sir," He said quietly. "It was my fault."  
  
"I know," Tyr said, still not looking up. Again, he heard more than saw Lim flinch.  
  
"I...I thought he might like this. You know. To make him feel better."  
  
Tyr turned at this, and Lim was standing there with outstretched hands, in which scrambled a mewling little kitten. "This was mine," Lim said, like that explained anything. "But...I went back and I couldn't find any of the rest. I think they died."  
  
Tyr looked suspiciously, with disdain, at the kitten in Lim's clutch. Lim stood with his outstretched arms and flinched a little, and looked very embarrassed all of a sudden.  
  
"Thank you," Tyr said curtly, saving him. He took the kitten from the boy and set it on his lap, where it immediately began batting at one long braid.  
  
Lim stifled a smile and quickly looked down at his bare feet, clasping his pale hands behind his equally pale garmented back. "I'm sorry," He said. "I didn't mean for Zay to get sick. My...my master is punishing me. He cut my meals and gave me a curfew and...I'm sorry." And he genuinely was. He had a sweet, fifteen year old innocence that could only come from growing up in the kitchens of such a wealthy, isolated estate. "Please don't punish Zay," he went on. "I think...I know he's not going to come up with me again anytime soon, anyway." A half-hearted attempt at a smile that Tyr returned gracefully. "I...I'll go now." And he slipped out of the colourfully furnished room without another word.  
  
--  
  
"WHERE THE FUCK AM I?" Harper yelled, and he yelled good.  
  
"Shit!" A large black man who was most definitely NOT Tyr clamped a big arm around Harper's chest, pinning his arms, trying to keep him on the cot where he had been placed.  
  
"Let me GO, you fucking sterile freddie!" Harper tried to bite him but it didn't really work out.  
  
"Zay, please, calm down!" A girl, some girl, a slim pale girl with ugly puke green eyes and hair that was so long it would have been antisocial in any reasonable civilisation, put a still, gentle hand on his splintered shin and he kicked her away, ignoring the spikes of pain jolting up from his fractured leg.  
  
"Who the FUCK are YOU?" He struggled again anew, trying to jab his captor in the ribs, but that didn't really work out either. "Let me GO!"  
  
It was no use, he couldn't get free. He was helpless and naked and hurting and cornered on all sides, and all of a sudden he was back in those sewers in Quincy with the bastard capos and Rave, and he saw it and he knew what happened and he understood for the first time in his life, and he had never been more scared.  
  
Calm down, Harper. Trance's familiar voice commanded him. Harper stilled and looked up and she was standing there, apparently unseen by his captors, leaning against the opposite wall, her hair done up with sparkly clips, smiling serenely at him. Her mouth didn't move, but he heard her voice. They're here to help you. Just calm down and do as they say.  
  
Harper didn't respond but he stared incredulously at the spot on the wall where Trance leaned casually, his eyes wide in his skull, a deep sort of unidentifiable sadness washing over him. Then they pushed him back down on the cot and he whimpered, and he would have thrashed again if it weren't for Trance's soothing voice in his head, shhh.  
  
Another man, a crazy looking man, big and fat and black with a head of short dreadlocks punctuated with colourful beads, and a long red and blue garment in dizzying patterns, appeared and smiled and Harper supposed he was trying to comfort him, but it wasn't working. The big strange man put a hand to Harper's head and chuckled and produced a bottle. "Give this to him to drink," He said. "He has a gukama spirit in his gut. This will drive it out."  
  
"WHAT?" Harper screamed, taking it to mean that they were going to take something vital out of him.  
  
He knows what he's doing, Harper. Trance's voice soothed him. Just trust him.  
  
Harper still looked warily at the stout brown bottle that the strange man was opening as his captor spoke gruffly. "Fine. You know how to contact me for payment. And you," He pointed with his free hand at the girl standing anxiously across from him. "Had better not tell anybody we were here."  
  
"No, sir," She said, with a rehearsed air that would have made Harper think she had been through this before, if he had been paying attention to that. "Of course not."  
  
And then his captor held Harper back more and pried open his mouth and they poured the most god-awful concoction down his throat.  
  
--  
  
"Jesus," He said, sipping a small cup of orange juice spiked with vodka. "Hair of the dog, eh?"  
  
Trance, sitting across from him in the mess hall of the Maru, smiled. "You should know better than to drink so much, Harper."  
  
"I know, I know, poor little Harper can't say no, right? Don't you worry about me, your purpleness, the Harper can handle his substances well enough to serve his purposes."  
  
Trance smiled again, in the innocent schoolgirl way she had when he flirted with her. "Do you feel better."  
  
"Hell, yeah," he said, toying with the flexi chips in front of him. "I feel fucking great. Like I woke up from a coma or something." He smiled. "So I guess you're here to give me some advice, huh?"  
  
"No. You're just dreaming."  
  
Harper's smile disappeared, a little quicker than he intended. "So...those other times, you weren't contacting me? Was I just hallucinating?"  
  
It seemed like Trance had difficulty answering the question, but Harper didn't know how much of that was true and how much of it was Trance being an engineered enigma.  
  
"Well, you have been hallucinating a little, you were awfully sick. But...I've been trying to help you." She smiled again. "But that medicine knocked you out pretty good. Still not a natural sleep, but your virus should be going away, so you should be getting better, eventually, anyhow. Right now is a dream. I'm...just memories."  
  
Harper toyed again with the flexis, passively. "But you're out there, right?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"And right now is just a dream?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"So it would be pointless to ask you if Beka and Dylan and Rommie are okay?"  
  
Trance blinked. Sadly. "It would." She said. "Right now is just a dream. And every dream has to end sometime."  
  
He looked up at her, his eyes gleaming severely. "That's the saddest thing I've ever heard anyone say."  
  
Trance smiled again, but this time it wasn't happy, or innocent, or girlish. It held the hardness of a millennia of heartbreak. "Truth hurts," She said. And she leaned over the table and kissed him on the cheek.  
  
--  
  
Harper woke up, but it wasn't with any strangled sob or surprised gasp. It was almost natural.  
  
Harper woke up in a much nicer pallet than the last one, with more substantial blanket, feeling marginally better than he had before.  
  
He wasn't in his own room, though. This one was much bigger, or it seemed so anyway, the way his breath wafted away from him instead of coming back to stifle him. The sound of the ocean was louder here. A bright virgin whiteness shone in from the big heavy low moon outside the balcony.  
  
His pallet was next to a large, high dark polished rosewood bed. He struggled to lean up on his elbows, and it wasn't as cumbersome as every other time he had tried to do it. He listened to the breathing of the person in the bed, and decided that Tyr was awake, but was waiting to see if Harper had awoken or just stirred.  
  
"Tyr?"  
  
"Yes, boy?"  
  
"You woke up when I woke up, didn't you?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Am I supposed to stay here in this room with you, then?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Okay." He paused, adjusting the sheets and blankets around him a little more. "Tyr?"  
  
"What?" A little irritated now.  
  
"I'm sorry I went out like that when you told me not to. I'll listen to you from now on."  
  
A deep, heavy, almost confused sigh. "Good," Tyr said.  
  
Harper collapsed back on his pallet and burrowed himself under his sheets. Suddenly something small and furry jumped up on the pallet and started nuzzling his still sunburnt arms.  
  
"Hello," He whispered, trying not to disturb Tyr. "Where did you come from?" He reached out to touch the kitten's head and it nosed his hand happily, purring freakishly loud. "I guess you like me. Well, I like you, too. Now what should I call you?" He couldn't make out the kitten's colours in the dark, but the creature shimmered a little, a little bluishly, greenishly. "Jungle?" The kitten mewled a little, happily, and snuggled a little under Harper's lower back, becoming a little ball of fluffy, purring heat.  
  
Harper smiled, a little, and went to sleep.  
  
TBC 


	6. Chapter 6

+ Chapter Six +  
  
Harper was considerably better in two weeks, much to his surprise. His right leg never did heal properly, however. It was sort of curved off to one side, but it was the best that could have been hoped for under such conditions.  
  
He spent all of the first week confined to Tyr's room, curled up asleep with Jungle on his low pallet that stuck out, halfway underneath Tyr's wide bed. He slept soundly; the nightmares didn't come as often.  
  
He would often awake to Tyr dressing quietly so as not to disturb him, or to Tyr crouching over his pallet, checking to see if his fever had returned or if he had caught a chill. He always spoke softly to Harper, well, Tyr's voice had always been a strong sort of soft, but now he spoke like he was trying to soothe a child, and there was something in his eyes that was troubling to Harper.  
  
On the fourth day, Harper could get himself out of bed, but he could barely walk. Tyr had to lift him up and hold him upright, leading him around the room like an invalid. Harper was barely putting any of his own weight on his feet; he was completely supported by Tyr and was going through the motions until his body had relearned them. At first it was humiliating, and that manifested itself in anger until Tyr warned him in that veiled, alien, scary sort of threat. Panga had been in the room at the time. Tyr hadn't bothered to apologize for it later.  
  
Once, after Harper had fallen, he cried a little, but he was determined to not let Panga or Tyr see. One of them did, however, and when his meal was sent to him that night there was a larger than usual helping of honey- tasting cake. Somebody felt guilty.  
  
After the seventh day the physical therapy sessions only lasted a few minutes every morning. Tyr was constantly away, conferring with Okasha and Lord Amasai. Lady Geeia 'lent' Panga to wait on him while Harper was bedridden (Because apparently women on this planet didn't preen as much as everywhere else, Harper would think, a little bitterly), and Harper would spend most of the day alone in the big luxurious room, playing boredly with Jungle or staring out the wide windows at the beckoning ocean.  
  
Sometimes Panga came back, alone, and sat with him, and talked quietly. They would sit on the little porch in the sun and Panga would comb her hair absently, while Harper watched. Her hair was so black, easily as dark as Tyr's, if not darker. It was so fine and shiny, and she had a little rosewood comb she said Representative Okasha had given to her. It wasn't like when Beka brushed her hair, with the big, black, wiry brush that she tore through her tangles. Trance used to preen a little like this with her fine hair before...well.  
  
Panga told him that there was another Zay on the estate, a young mother in the kitchen named Zayla. So the slaves referred to them as "Zay in the Kitchen" and "Zay With the Limp" because Panga had been relaying the gossip from his physical therapy sessions onto Lim. She smiled at Harper's darkened look. "I don't tell him *everything*, Zay. Calm down." And that didn't make Harper feel any better about it.  
  
He asked why Lim never came to visit.  
  
"He's too busy," Panga said, simply. "Okasha's *really* mad at him. It's crazy. I've never seen anything like it." She looked down dispassionately at Jungle, who was on his hind legs, his little paws reaching up to her flicking hair. Harper scooped the kitten up and held him to his chest. "He's really sorry, you know," Panga went on.  
  
"Lim? Why?"  
  
"For getting you in trouble. For making you sick."  
  
"Wasn't his fault."  
  
"Tell that to him. You should see him. He's going out of his mind."  
  
Harper let the kitten playfully love bite his proffered finger. "He shouldn't. Tell him I'm not mad or anything."  
  
Panga looked at him strangely. "It's not that," She said, softly. "He doesn't believe me when I say you're okay now. Like you're walking and stuff. He thinks..." She looked away, back at the ocean, combing her hair absently. "Representative Okasha is very strict, that's all. And Lim is just...paranoid that Lord Anasazi is strict as well."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"But he's not."  
  
It was a loaded sentence. Harper wasn't sure if it warranted a response, and if he was supposed to give one. Social nuances weren't exactly taught at the Boston Finishing School for Street Boys. He felt a little uncomfortable, like in this situation there probably shouldn't have been social nuances, anyway. Slavery and all. Seemed to level the playing field somewhat, at first glance anyway. Now, with those three little words, everything seemed...different. For one obscure, paranoid moment, Harper wondered why, exactly, she was there, acting friendly, asking questions. Almost flirting. If she knew how to flirt. And if she was trying to flirt, Harper had to admit she wasn't very good at it. The sad, unattractive green eyes didn't help. They were disconcerting.  
  
"He's not...not strict." Harper tried to reason.  
  
"He sp..." Panga trailed off, like it wasn't her place to say.  
  
"Well what am I supposed to say to that?" Harper asked softly. "It's not exactly like I can control him, is it?"  
  
"Maybe." Panga said, cryptically. And she didn't look at him. But her voice was sad. She blinked long-lashed, unattractive green eyes at him. Long- lashed. Long black lashes. He had never noticed that before. "Can I comb your hair for you?"  
  
Harper started. "I...why?"  
  
"It's tangled."  
  
Harper was unaware it was long enough to be tangled. But he let her untangle it with her pale, skinny hands anyways.  
  
"It takes me hours to get Lady Geeia's hair up," Panga explained, good naturedly. "But it'll only take me a second to fix yours."  
  
--  
  
"You have been sent a gift." Tyr said solemnly after Harper was walking on his own again.  
  
"Huh?" Harper looked up from where he had been making Tyr's wide, needlessly elaborate bed. He leaned heavily on his good leg.  
  
They had fallen easily enough into their roles as Harper had healed. Easily enough that they didn't stand out too much, anyway. Harper still didn't move the same way the other slaves did, he stood too tall, he talked too quickly, loudly, casually. He wasn't making his fragile friendship with Tyr anything more than a fragile friendship. There wasn't any more trust or respect than there was before.  
  
Well, maybe a little. The older man had saved his life, again, after all.  
  
For his part, Tyr filled the role almost flawlessly. There were parts of him that weren't completely committed, but Harper suspected he was the only one that could see those. Harper was the only one who lay in the same room as Tyr when he slept, after all, the only one who had begun timing his own breaths with the other man's, to comfort himself at night. Only he knew Tyr was pretending half the time he was asleep. Only he saw the planning and the calculation and the disgust and the confusion in Tyr's eyes, heard it in his voice.  
  
And even he was only that familiar from having crewed with the man for three years.  
  
Tyr stood at one of the deep wood chests, staring with amusement at the wrapped, soft package atop it. He was dressed ornately, in rich colours, a form fitting shirt with detachable sleeves, almost womanly were it worn by a slighter man. A short, skinny cloak hung down his back, affixed by silver clasps to his shoulders. Big boots. Big...big boots. Harper scratched his good calf with his bare right foot nervously. How could the big guy wear so much black in such heat, anyway? This planet was seriously fucked up beyond all reason.  
  
"I had breakfast with the Lady Geeia this morning," Tyr started.  
  
Oh, yeah. And Harper had sat around in the room for two hours, starving and supposed to be doing chores. He hurried to finish the bed.  
  
"Our...host has sent you a present."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Who knows." Tyr didn't elaborate but his tone said it all, really. He poked the package, amused. "But it would be unwise to appear ungrateful. Now come over here."  
  
Harper felt his lip curl and he limped over to stand next to the Nietszchean, who was unwrapping the package slowly. The big man chuckled, sort of, when he held up the gift.  
  
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Harper breathed. "That is serious creepy. Like ew."  
  
It was a gown, a fine, small shimmering silver gown. It was feminine and helpless and...wrong in so many ways. Harper grimaced, and thought of Lord Amasai, who thankfully had left him alone during his convalescence, and grimaced again.  
  
"Relax." Tyr chuckled. "It's your good clothes. For prayers. Even the slaves are expected to dress appropriately."  
  
"Just do me a favour and kill me."  
  
"When you've healed so quickly? You do my tutelage shame, little one."  
  
"Tutelage? Who the fuck are you now, Rev Bem?"  
  
It was a forced banter they put up when they went through still foreign ordeals such as this. A game to reinforce that they were still just crewmembers, acquaintances, casual comrades. Not Master and slave, not intimate...whatever they were supposed to be.  
  
They had become quite adept at dropping the game if anyone else were to show up. The only things they weren't so adept at dropping yet were Harper's shoulders, eyes, and pride. But that would come in time, Tyr thought. It'd better.  
  
Harper stood facing away from Tyr, his head inclined slightly. His hair had been growing, and it was already deceptively long under all that goo he usually wore. Harper held his hands at the base of his skull, holding his hair away from the ties in his garment. It struck Tyr as disturbingly similar to the stance taken by Kodiak prisoners at their execution.  
  
He pushed the thought out of his head.  
  
"It is needlessly generous of him," Tyr said, ominously, as the silver garment was draped over one wide shoulder. He started to undo the complicated ties on the back of Harper's garment, and help the boy into the delicate silver gown. "What should a Lord like him care what a slave wears to prayer?"  
  
"Maybe he just likes me." Harper said with a sly grin, fake as it was. "Maybe he's just taken by my charm and good looks."  
  
"Don't even joke about that." Tyr said, lightly, with just a hint of distaste. "I don't trust him as it is. I don't need bad judgment thrown into it."  
  
Tyr finished slipping the fine garment over Harper's wiry body and turned the boy to look at him for inspection.  
  
"This is about a 6.9 on the Richter Ew Scale," Harper said, making a trademark face, as he stood with his hands pulling the hem of the flimsy skirt further over his thighs.  
  
It was shorter than the white garment, which fell to almost knee-length and to which Harper had become accustomed. It fell to just above mid-thigh, and tickled there uncomfortably.  
  
It was also considerably tighter than the white gown, and was obviously not intended for work but decoration. It had no sleeves and had a high neck, and was silky enough that it clung here and there. It shimmered in a way that reminded Harper of the decorations Trance used to wear in her hair, but he refused to let himself think about that, or the similar silver hue on the outside of Andromeda's hull...  
  
"You'll tear it," Tyr scolded, batting Harper's hands away from the hem of the skirt, his cloak fluttering as his shoulders moved.  
  
When they were alone together Tyr hardly demanded anything of Harper. Usually, when he did demand, it was to tell him to be quiet or remember not to behave that way when others were around. There certainly wasn't as much demanding going on as there was on the Andromeda. No mock punches, no fond mussing of hair. There was worrying and a guilty distance. He didn't even have Harper help him dress, as was the duty of a valet and probably common amongst all the other nobles at this estate, even though he had to help Harper into the boy's own complicated garment. If anything, the distance and space between them, however friendly, disturbed Harper more than the game they played in front of everyone else.  
  
"I hate it." Harper said.  
  
"You shouldn't." Tyr replied, with authority. "Even you should be able to appreciate the work that went into making such a fine fabric. Besides, for a slave to even be asked along to prayers is quite the honour."  
  
"Why?"  
  
Tyr shrugged, rolling his eyes a little. "Part of the ceremony is thanking the deities for the gift of the 'othermen', the slaves. It's part of their creation story. It's all very useless," He waved a hand dismissively when Harper opened his mouth again to ask for an elaboration. "For a part during the ceremony slaves are honoured as prized possessions and...assets. They sit with their masters, on the right side, not segregated to the background like every other time."  
  
"And not all the slaves get to go?"  
  
"Well, obviously not, or half the courtyard would be full of Amasai's kitchen staff. They told me to bring you, now that you're well enough. Probably because you're the only other person with me, and they believe I value you more."  
  
"Well, it's a damn shame we can't teach these backwards barbarians the truth then, eh?" Harper sneered. He didn't need another reminder that Tyr saw him as a burden. He didn't need any reminder of his life on the Andromeda, really. He was already starting to forget the feel of his own clothes. The taste of Sparky Cola was somewhat fainter in his memory. Bringing up old emotions just made that realization worse.  
  
Tyr stood in the doorway for a moment, his head inclined slightly, regarding Harper. He had a similar expression to the one he wore most of the time Harper had been infested. Then he blinked, and Harper dropped his gaze and had to consciously drop his shoulders and his head, and he followed Tyr silently into the hallway.  
  
There were three wings of the estate; Harper had only seen the inside of two. The bigger, main one stood in the middle, and held the dining hall, the library, the ready rooms, and all the private chambers of the nobility that resided or visited there. The two smaller wings on each side both had a courtyard. One of those wings held the kitchens, and the other the storage and stables. And the servants' quarters. The slaves far outnumbered the nobility here.  
  
Prayers were held in the courtyard in the western block, facing the direction of the rising sun. They knelt in rows facing the western wall, row upon row of dark nobles, spotted here and there with a skinny, silvery pale companion.  
  
Harper sat on Tyr's right hand side, in the shade. They knelt with their knees touching, sitting back on their calves. It was painful. And Harper was bored out of his skull. He stared up at the impossibly blue sky, boxed in by low white stucco walls and oppressively low-hanging green trees.  
  
He pulled subconsciously at the hem of the short silver gown.  
  
The ceremony wasn't even in the common tongue. It was in something mumbly and throaty and disturbingly alien, right when Harper was getting used to the local accent. His hands shook with restlessness on his bare knees, and he pulled again at the hem of his gown when it threatened to ride up too high.  
  
When he did this for about the fifth time, Tyr struck him suddenly on the side of his bare thigh, silently. A red mark was left and Harper started, blue eyes widening and staring at Tyr.  
  
Tyr glanced at him out of the corner of his eyes and his lips twitched ever so slightly, and Harper got the message to stop fidgeting and lower his damn eyes.  
  
He spent the rest of the ceremony staring at the grass in front of his knees and surreptitiously playing with the hem of his slave garment, decorative as it was.  
  
--  
  
"You're going to help me, right?"  
  
Lim had caught up with Harper in the halls as he limped back to Tyr's room; the younger boy had come to help Harper change back into his white work clothes.  
  
"Rest day meals are harder to prepare," Lim said. "You'll come help us in the kitchen, right?" Harper wracked his brain, trying to remember if Tyr had told him to come back to the eastern courtyard. But he was pretty sure he was planning on hiding in the shade of Tyr's room, playing with Jungle and trying not to think about the Andromeda too much.  
  
"Sure," He said as Lim did up the intricate laces of his white gown. "If you don't think I'll screw it up."  
  
"Nah, you won't screw it up. You wouldn't screw anything up," Lim said, and there was just a hint of jealousy in his voice. Harper half expected him to say "Oh freakin' genius," like Beka sometimes did when she teased him, and it took him a while to get used to the idea that Lim wasn't going to say it.  
  
When he was done, Lim lingered in front of the deep wooden chest while Harper sat on the floor in front of Tyr's bed, tying up his sandals over his slightly curved leg, and pushing Jungle back when the kitten tried to curl up in his lap.  
  
"Did Lord Amasai send this to you?" The raven-haired boy fingered the silken silver gown.  
  
"Yeah. Why?"  
  
"Just wondering." Lim dropped his hand and stepped back a ways, his head bowed like it always was in this part of the estate. When they were in the servants' domain, or outside, he always had his young face towards the sun, and he graced everyone with a big smile, or a dramatic scowl. "Does Lord Amasai ever...look at you funny?"  
  
Harper wondered about how to answer that question. "Not really," He lied.  
  
"Oh," Lim said, and there was something funny in his tone of voice. Like he was surprised.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Nothing." Lim shrugged it off, and dropped a scratch behind Jungle's ears, and jerked his head towards the door. "C'mon, they need us."  
  
TBC 


	7. Chapter 7

+ Chapter Seven +  
  
The 'rest day' really was a misnomer, Tyr thought, standing in the glaring sunlight of the eastern courtyard. It was just like any other post-or-pre- meal gathering of the nobility, drinking their liquor in the sunlight and congratulating each other in that pompous vernacular of theirs.  
  
The green of the grass and trees was as blinding as ever, contrasting sharply with the dizzying blue of the sky above their heads. Boxed in by high white walls. A mosaic of colours so vibrant and sharp; Tyr was starting to forget the drab greyness of the inside of a spaceship.  
  
He shook his head, and looked suspiciously at the glass of whisky in his hand.  
  
They had set up several large circles of hay and fabric, with painted red and white circles. Several of the men had stood up with needlessly elaborate bow and arrows, trying to impress the various, noble ladies assembled there. Tyr had watched with well-masked annoyance at the pomposity of the noblemen. Some of them were good shots, and could make capable warriors if their lifestyles weren't so soft.  
  
The hours after prayers wore on, boring, with so much forced laughter and wit it was almost painful. He stood to nearer to one of the walls, holding his whisky, almost in the shade. He was near Lady Geeia, who had been following him around discreetly since prayers, her pale blue gown trailing behind her. She had decided, with a childish, ladylike smile and laugh, that she would try her hand at archery.  
  
Lord Amasai was seated at his usual table, set up by the slaves in the courtyard, holding his own glass of whisky and looking impertinently smug with his surroundings. Tyr had an inexplicable urge to wipe the arrogant smile off his face with a well-placed fist. He bit it back and sighed as softly as he could.  
  
Lady Geeia smirked, as if she was holding back laughter. Tyr tried not to respond. She slung her bow and drew the arrow back stoically.  
  
"Why don't you take up a bow and arrow?" She asked, squinting at her target in the sunlight. Her gaze was confident and scrutinizing. "Show us some of that renowned Anasazi prowess?"  
  
He managed a smile, as forced as it was. Geeia had her hair piled up high on top of her head, in sweeps of engineered carelessness. It reminded Tyr vaguely of Trance when he first met her.  
  
"I don't need to prove myself." He said. "And I wouldn't want to reveal any of my weak points to my... esteemed hosts."  
  
"Reveal your weak points? Are you afraid you might be bested by a woman?" There was almost a wink in her eyes and she let the arrow fly, hitting it's target dead on.  
  
Tyr almost blinked.  
  
Lady Geeia reached for another bow, and Tyr realized belatedly that her unattractive little serving girl was standing at her side, handing them to her calmly.  
  
"They say that General Anasazi never misses his target. That he kills without discretion, even the women, even the children. That he takes no prisoners." Again her arrow hit her target with frightening precision. "But I'm not so sure about you." She didn't even bother looking at him, and reached for another arrow.  
  
"My Lady?"  
  
"Lord Amasai doesn't know what is going on in his own country." She lowered her voice at this, her face never breaking it's childish, ladylike smile, her eyes never off her target. "He's talking about blindly rushing into war with my people, my land. He hires the most feared, ruthless, heartless man in the country. He thinks, anyway."  
  
"My Lady, I really don't think-"  
  
"They are not a loose band of rabble rousers bent on defying authority, General. They will fight to the death. Even the women and children. I know because I am one of them." Three arrows now, embedded so close together in the target board they could've been one.  
  
"If you think I cannot handle such a threat-"  
  
"You can't. You will fail." For the first time that morning she looked up at him, in the eye. "In order to win this, the leader must be completely without hesitation. He must be willing to slaughter every last man, woman, and child of his enemy."  
  
Tyr chuckled, almost. "I have no qualms about destroying the families of my enemy."  
  
"But they are not your enemy, are they?" The humour never left Lady Geeia's face. She spoke of the impending war in her homeland like she was discussing the weather. "You don't feel the same passion for expansion or glory as Lord Amasai does. You don't take this situation as seriously as the desired warlord would."  
  
"I don't think you know what you're talking about." He masked his nervousness.  
  
"Sometimes I'm not so sure, either," Lady Geeia finally broke the jovial facade with an actual laugh, but Tyr still felt the eyes of her unattractive serving girl boring into him. With the fear, or probably the hate, that she seemed to carry deep in her belly for him. "Here," Geeia handed him her own slender bow, unconsciously guiding his fingers to the correct spots. "You have a good arm for this. And I'm sure your aim is impeccable. Master General Anasazi." There was an aural grin in her voice there, like a teen's flirtatious teasing. Or Harper's.  
  
Mmm.  
  
"My brother and I were both trained by the finest archers of our region." Lady Geeia smiled over Tyr's bulky arms gripping the bow and arrow. "Our family has always been involved in the politics of this land. Our family has always been among the wealthiest for many generations. We owe our wealth and our happiness to the people there, to their hard work and ingenuity. We are only as powerful there as they allow us to be." Tyr let the bow loose and the arrow hit its mark dead on.  
  
Lady Geeia's dark eyes lit up. "Impressive! Especially for someone who's never shot an arrow for an audience before. Perhaps you should proove that it's not just beginner's luck?" Her serving girl handed her another arrow, and Geeia slipped it to Tyr with an enigmatic smile. She watched him size up the target again. "Our people are our greatest asset." She went on. "We dream of a day when they live in a free, and prosperous land, where they have a real voice in their own governance." Tyr was starting to get a bit nervous. "In the past, the biggest obstacle to our goal was the then-King's military advisor. A solitary, legendary man known for his ruthlessness and dispassion. He would never let our little plot of land go without a fight, a fight that we would surely lose." She leaned closer to Tyr, resting one delicate, pampered and well-educated hand on the small of his back. "He was the bane of our existence. General Anasazi. Nightmare to anyone who dare cross him." Tyr tightened the bow. "It's a good thing he's dead now."  
  
Tyr let go the bow prematurely. The startled bow was lodged, quivering, in a nearby tree.  
  
Scattered laughter.  
  
Lady Geeia laughed, a loud, boisterous laugh that reminded Tyr eerily of Beka. "Oops! It seems I've found your weak spot, Tyr!" She turned a slender back to him, still tittering girlishly, the ugly green-eyed girl following, something not quite a smile but still not a frown playing on her lips.  
  
If Tyr had been Harper he would've sworn a blue streak.  
  
--  
  
"He's made it clear, I think. Your master. I wish somebody would do that for me for once. Here, take this." Lim handed Harper a basket of small rolls of bread that smelled deliciously fresh. Harper bit his lip and wondered when the last time he had something so fresh and perfect to eat was. It was almost like being back on Earth again- except the hunger wasn't so blindingly painful. There was just this severe little boundary between the necessities he received and the luxuries everyone else enjoyed.  
  
"What do you mean?" He asked, raising one eyebrow, following the dark- haired boy as he moved quickly through the busy kitchen like a dog through traffic.  
  
"Look, it's obvious that Lord Amasai has it bad for you. Your master just made it clear that you're off limits and Lord Amasai just respects him so much that he'll leave you alone." Lim didn't turn back and look at Harper as he said those words, moving quickly down the white stucco halls.  
  
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Harper tried not to think about how nice it would be to eat one of those rolls while it was still fresh.  
  
"It's just nice, that's all." Lim sighed. "I don't know. I just talk about anything, you know that. Ignore me."  
  
"Well what did you-"  
  
"Shh." Lim stopped Harper and laid a small pale hand on a pair of huge, solid wooden doors that had appeared in front of them. Lim laid one small pale hand against the dark of the door, balancing one large steaming plate of meat across his other, bare arm. He leaned a little, ineffectually, against the arm he had against the door. "A little help, eh?" He said, whining a little, and Harper allowed a small, stifled laugh.  
  
He pushed open the door and as Lim entered the dining hall, his head bowed and his dark hair hanging over his face like a curtain, Harper hung back and stared up at the massive hall before him.  
  
He had never had the pleasure of eating in the big dining hall before, of course, having been confined to Tyr's quarters or his own small room in the servant's wing. It took him a moment to realize that none of the slaves present were eating anyway, just on hand when a drink needed refilling or a mess needed cleaning up.  
  
Even so, Harper had never seen anything like it. In space, everything had a tendency to be minimalist, even the High Guard. Harper, after a lifetime of stealing bread from his Nietzschean overlords and hiding away crumbs on his small bunk on he Maru, had been a guest at the palaces of many Commonwealth signatory monarchs and leaders. But nothing like the fire-lit, deep coloured and heavily tapestried splendour before him now. It reminded him of something from the stories that were told in the light of Boston's old trash can fires.  
  
What was the name of that hero? Bay Wolf?  
  
Harper fleetingly wondered how anyone could have a room like this in their home. The ceiling was higher than was possibly practical, and wide, dark pillars held it up, covered in intricate narrative images in the same style and from the same wood as the wide dark doors. From the ceilings, tapestries in the widest range of rich, deep colours hung right to the floor, splashing the walls with scenes of conquest and triumphs and pillage and rape. Flaming torches mounted here and there lit the room sporadically like a cheap amusement park haunted house.  
  
Miles of white, green and rich red tablecloth ran in two rows, directly in front of him, the gentlemen on the left and the ladies on the right. Joining the tables in the middle, on the other end of the agoraphobic room, sat Amasai with a smug look on his rum-coffee face, with a few favoured nobles.  
  
A handful of musicians and entertainers performed in the created courtyard. It was noisy. Everyone drank from jewelled cups. Even the plates, Harper realized belatedly, were carved with the same scenes as the pillars and tapestries.  
  
Harper suddenly felt very much in over his head.  
  
"Zay!" He heard Lim whisper at him, and the dark-haired boy nodded towards the tables.  
  
Harper blinked, for at that split second the music faded, and instead of Lim he saw a certain other dark-haired boy from his childhood staring up solemnly at him.  
  
"Don't be scared." Rave shrugged. "I'll take care of it."  
  
Harper shook his head and was brought back to reality when his longish hair whipped against the back of his neck. He lowered his gaze when he noticed Lim was still waiting for him, hid his clear blue eyes from this unfair world, and followed silently.  
  
--  
  
Tyr sat on the gentlemen's side of the room, a little closer to the Lord Amasai than he would have been comfortable with. He sat the way he always did, that is to say, alert and upright, his arms crossed over his chest, his forearms covered with the thick black animal hide that had come to make up most of his wardrobe now, the half-cape sweeping over the back of the intricately carved dark wood chair. He leaned back very slightly, just to give the illusion that he was casually enjoying himself, his big black boots crossed at the ankle.  
  
How, exactly, was a warlord supposed to enjoy himself? The job description in itself seemed like a curse, running around waging wars on whomever for whatever. It seemed more like a foolhardy child's game than a real calling. What other people might have called pride or a thrill Tyr saw as a deathwish. But he had been a mercenary for a very long time to survive, and if being a warlord meant surviving and returning to care for his son, he would do it.  
  
Lady Geeia sat almost directly across from him and she seemed to take great delight in not meeting his gaze. He didn't realize that he spent most of his time staring at her not staring at him, and he looked slightly more like a lovesick schoolboy than the nonchalant warrior he was trying to convey.  
  
She had managed to find time to change in between the archery and lazing around in the sun and now. Her hair, having been in wild curls and bound up before, was now tied in what could only have been uncomfortably tight knots around her head. She wore something low and red, that wrapped around her torso and left her arms and legs bare. It was refreshing and...alluring in its simplicity.  
  
"It's traditional where we come from," Okasha said as he appeared in the bejewelled seat next to Tyr, a cup of wine in each hand.  
  
Tyr didn't show it, but he was a little startled.  
  
"It's a sort of variation on the dress that the village women wear down there. Well, it's a little fancier, but you know." Okasha continued. He gave Tyr an unsettling, knowing smile. "She's not supposed to wear it here. Our culture offends his Lordship," He whispered the last part, but he still managed to spit the last word, and the biting spite wasn't lost. "But my sister doesn't care for his Lordship's delicate sensibilities. If she feels that making a certain point is in her best interests, she'll do it, and she doesn't care whose toes she steps on."  
  
Tyr's eyes involuntarily flickered back to where Geeia sat, surrounded by other noblewomen, other wives and sisters that he hadn't met personally. Her deep, wide dark eyes were upon his and she smiled, enigmatically, before getting up and leaving the table, not even excusing herself to her friends.  
  
"Come on, Anasazi." Okasha said. "It's the rest day meal, it's more of a party than a formal thing, let's go have a bit of tobacco. I have something I need to talk to you about." He stood up and left without another word, and somehow, Tyr found himself following.  
  
--  
  
Harper was tired and a little confused. The sporadically lit, richly coloured room reminded him at times of the trash-can fire lit tunnels in Boston and the attached, conflicting emotions sapped his strength. So, he only managed to cock a quirky eyebrow when Lim told him to refill Lord Amasai's wine.  
  
"Huh?" So far that night he had just followed Lim around like a sort of damned assistant, helping when Lim had to carry some plate that was too big or something, picking up after him. Now Lim bit his lip and his dark eyes flickered between the head of the table and Harper.  
  
"Here. It's fine. His cup is getting low, they're all getting low, just take this and go over there and fill it up." With that, Lim held up a large, intricately designed wine jug that was almost as big as he was.  
  
"What? Why can't you do it, you're not doing anything else." Some of the old snark was crawling back onto Harper's face but he was comfortable enough around Lim now to show it.  
  
"Please, Zay?" Lim pouted.  
  
"Boo that. I'm not going over there. That guy totally gives me the creeps."  
  
"Please just to this for me just this once and I'll never ask you anything again."  
  
"Oh, right, yeah, I believe you there." Harper pulled a face and backed away a little.  
  
"Zay, please, just..." Lim bit his lip and looked at a spot somewhere behind Harper's shoulder, before hastily shoving the big intricate wine jar into Harper's hands and then scampering off.  
  
"What the f...Jesus." Harper was too taken aback by the weight of the jar in his arms to follow where Lim had run off to. "I can't believe this," He muttered under his breath as he made his way to the head of the table where the Lord and his favoured noblemen sat, struggling to not spill the sweet smelling wine.  
  
He made sure to keep his eyes lowered as he approached the table, which admittedly made it difficult to navigate his way to the table.  
  
Amasai was sitting casually with one elbow resting on the table, playing idly with his bejewlled, empty wine cup. He sat his legs reclined out before him, away from the table, in an informal, almost bored manner.  
  
"Of course there has been more rain in the north these past few weeks," He was saying to one of his friends, who were sitting around him just as languidly, very obviously affected by the wine they had all been drinking. "It's been good for the crops, and I suspect we'll have a slighter wetter summer as well."  
  
Harper scowled at the mess of big, heavy crossed boots before him, picking his way delicately across them to get to the table and pour the damned wine all ready.  
  
"But you can feel the humidity of course." Amasai went on, and Harper could feel the bigger man's eyes on his face.  
  
He felt his Lordship move but he didn't see what was going on, and that unsettled him. Years ago he was quite good at following a Nietzschean's movements without the luxury of being able to raise his gaze. He had become soft on the Andro-  
  
"Every day you can feel more of the humidity on your skin and in your breath. And just look at this little one's hair."  
  
And then he touched him! The slurring bastard actually reached out and stuck a hand into Harper's now longish hair, and the little engineer jerked involuntarily.  
  
Amasai chuckled, he actually had the gall to chuckle, and Harper realized that his Lordship had brought his legs around Harper's, effectively trapping him there. He jerked involuntarily again. Amasai reached out and pulled Harper closer to him, so close Harper could smell, no, taste the wine on his breath, the bigger man's hands travelling dangerously close to the hem of his pure white slave's garment. "Is the humidity making limp your pretty yellow hair?"  
  
At the feel of his Lordship's hands on his bare skin, something flashed through Harper, a shame-filled, disgusting fear that he had felt in a fuller, all-encompassing way when he was last ill. He could feel the fear and the disgust and the shame and the hurt start to fill him up again. Suddenly, he very much wanted to expel that fear, and he reacted the only way he knew how to.  
  
"Don't touch me!" Harper's voice suddenly broke out of the silent little shell that he had somehow become, and he elbowed the inert Lord hard in the center of his chest. He tripped backwards over Amasai's legs and ended up sprawled on the elaborate marble floor, spluttering indignantly, red-faced and covered in wine.  
  
The nobles there all laughed as Harper reached to pull the hem of his wine- soaked slave's garment down a little more modestly.  
  
"Don't you ever touch me again, you fucking Uber piece of-" Harper drew back a fist to strike Lord Amasai, his shrill voice carried and filled the entire breadth of the big spectacular room, and everyone, literally, stopped and turned. Lord Amasai's eyebrows raised and he gave a short, startling bark of delighted laughter. Harper's face reddened even more if that was possible.  
  
"Oh, that was a bril move Shay, way to fucking go." Harper spun and saw Rave there, leaning against the wall, arms crossed and staring up at him with those hardened dark eyes, a flippant sneer on his face.  
  
What. The. Fuck? Harper started shaking for some reason, and he swallowed hard, trying very hard to prevent the angry tears that were now spiking at the back of his eyes. He shook even more as the rest of the congregated nobles started to share in their Lord's jarring, arrogant laugh, and very quickly ran in the direction of the kitchens.  
  
About halfway there, still muttering obscenities under his breath and leaving purpley wine-scented footprints everywhere he went, he found Lim huddled up against the wall, trying his best that Harper wouldn't see him.  
  
"What the fuck was that?!" Harper yelled, pushing Lim's exposed shoulder harshly so the other boy slammed into the wall. "Did you fucking know that was going to happen? Did you fucking set me up?"  
  
"Zay, I'm so sorry," The dark-eyed boy was shaking just as hard with fear as Harper was from righteous anger. "I'm so, so sorry, I had no idea that-"  
  
"Why the fuck did you do that to me? Do you know what you've just...I fucking hate you, do you know that? I hate you!" He slammed Lim up against the wall again, using both hands this time. "I hope you-"  
  
"Zay, stop!" Panga had her arms around her waist now, and Harper didn't know where she had come from or how long she had been trying to get his attention.  
  
"Stay out of this, let me go!" Harper didn't even bother turning, his gaze staying on Lim the whole time. He felt betrayed. He felt worse than betrayed, he felt that somehow the floodgates of some other, bigger betrayal had just been opened by Lim, whom he had mistaken for a friend. The lingering feeling of fear and shame was still there and it scared him, and as long as he was yelling at someone he didn't have to think about it.  
  
"Zay, stop it." Panga said, firmly this time, and she shoved him back away from Lim. "It's not Lim's fault. You know that. It would've been worse. You haven't seen what-"  
  
"Fine. Whatever." Harper sneered, wiping an errant, spiteful tear from his face, and stormed off, resuming his flight to the kitchens, and past. While he was going he almost heard Lim's sniffling, and Panga telling him that she would clean the hall up and everything would be all right.  
  
--  
  
Tyr stood outside the exterior doors of the kitchen, facing the trees that separated the estate and the ocean, staring up at the endless, dizzying sea of stars above him. He rubbed at the spaces between his hidden bone spurs absently.  
  
He had painted himself into a corner. Geeia and Okasha had confronted him, plain and simple, without the pretense and the flirty doublespeak that Geeia had been using before. They knew he wasn't the real General Anasazi they said, and they knew the real General Anasazi was dead, one of Okasha's loyal servants had found his body. They were fairly certain they were the only ones who knew and they would keep his secret and help him find a way to get back home, wherever that was, if he only did one thing for him. Lead the ragtag army of misfits from their homeland in rebellion against Amasai's occupation. Dupe Amasai into thinking he was fighting his war, but lead the Southers until the people were once again free.  
  
Fight a double war, a double lie. Live one double life inside another.  
  
And Tyr really had no choice if he wanted to survive. He could have snapped both their necks if a ship was on hand to fly away to another planet where nobody would ever find him, but for the time being, until he fulfilled this wish of theirs, he was stranded. He knew full well, thought he wouldn't admit it to Harper, that they were stuck on this planet without the help of at least a few friendly natives.  
  
It was almost frightening, their transformation, from the smiling, good- natured brother and sister pair that they were before. Now they stood before him, fully capable of sealing his and Harper's death, and they still smiled, as if Tyr's fate were some immense joke. There was an intensity and a fearsome capability in their eyes that Tyr had not noticed before, and he almost respected them for it.  
  
He did respect them for it.  
  
They had left him to make his decision almost as quickly as they had dragged him out to tell him their ultimatum, with the same deadly smiles and none of the friendly joviality or flirting that one or the other usually bestowed upon him. They left him alone.  
  
And, not for the first time in his life, he felt immensely lonely.  
  
Harper came bursting out of the exterior kitchen door, cursing loudly. He almost ran right past Tyr if not for the Nietzschean's arm that came out instinctively to block him.  
  
"Fucking hell ass...!" Harper almost squeaked when Tyr clamped a wide, dark hand over his mouth.  
  
"Be silent!" Tyr hissed. He took in Harper's tear-streaked, reddened face and purple-soaked garment. "What in hell happened to you?"  
  
"What does it look like?" Harper batted away Tyr's arms with a strength neither men knew he had. "That bastard tried to...he tried to...fuck!"  
  
"What did you do, boy?"  
  
"I couldn't help it! He tried to...what would you have done? Huh? Would you have just stood there and taken it? Is that what you'd have me do?" Harper's voice was high-pitched and frantic. "There's only so much I can take, Tyr! I've had e-fucking-nough of this shit!"  
  
"Harper, calm down and be quiet," Tyr almost growled, kneeling down so he was closer to the boy's eye level. "Please tell me you didn't do what I think you did. Please tell me you didn't give our esteemed Lord Amasai reason to be angry with us."  
  
Harper calmed down, a little, his breathing still hitched in his chest and the tears still streamed down his face freely. After a very long, frightening pause, he said, smally, "I'm sorry, Tyr."  
  
"Divine help us." Tyr muttered as he took one of Harper's arms, painfully, and dragged him off into the woods, towards the ocean.  
  
"Look, it'll be all right," Harper tried to reason, but his voice was still hitching with sobs and it wasn't very convincing. "I'm better now, right? Let's just tell them that I'm all fine now and you want to go back home and we'll go fix the Maru and get the hell off this rock."  
  
"We cannot."  
  
"Why the fuck not? Tyr? Please! I really can't stand this anymore!" Harper stopped short as he realized that they had come to the edge of the beach, a small enclave where the shore lapped up gently in the nighttime darkness. A large, virginal moon hung low in the sky, reflected off the waves in blinding ribbons of silver on black.  
  
"We cannot." Tyr said, softly. He watched as Harper walked across the dull sand softly, as if drawn to the gently lapping black waves. "We're bound here now. We cannot leave until we get the help of the people here and that won't be for a while."  
  
Harper stood with the water reaching his knees now, staring down at the waves that pooled around him. Tyr wondered for a moment if the boy had heard what he had said.  
  
Harper was remembering. He was remembering for what was possibly the first time outside of dreams, outside of delirium, the nights in the sewers in Quincy, and the way Rave would steal out of the shadows and take his place. The disgusting sort of shameful fear rose up in him again and he choked it down, wiping away another errant, spiteful tear. He rubbed his face and tried to remember what Tyr was saying. "Why...why can't you just, like, demand to be left alone for so long or whatever when you plan the war?"  
  
"It's not that easy."  
  
"It never fucking is with you, is it?"  
  
Tyr contemplating telling Harper the truth but it would have been too dangerous. He took a step forward in the sand, closer to the water. "Harper, I want you to look at the sky."  
  
"Oh, fuck off."  
  
"Boy. Please." Tyr didn't bother to take notice of his boots or trousers as he came to stand stoically in the water behind Harper, resting his hands on the boy's shoulders. "Just look."  
  
Harper sighed and lifted his gaze, causing an uncomfortable crick in the curve of his back, and took in the massive field of stars above him.  
  
"Do you think you can find out where we are from this?"  
  
"No." It was said out of spite. Tyr's grip on his shoulders tightened somewhat.  
  
"Just look. Think. After a long time, after you've had a chance to map these and observe them, do you think you could possibly find out where we are?"  
  
"....maybe." He muttered peevishly.  
  
"Good." Tyr's hands continued to rub and prod gently at the uncomfortable crick in the curve of Harper's back. Harper stared up at the stars, a little confused by their numbers- of course, he had never been on a planet where the sky was this clear before. There was something niggling about them. Something textbook and almost but not quite there that he should have grasped...but he couldn't. Yet another thing he couldn't do.  
  
"I can't do this, Tyr," He said, and his voice was quiet and mournful. "I can't fucking...I can't do anything here anymore. I don't even know who I am anymore."  
  
"Boy-"  
  
"No, shut up for a second, let me talk." Harper turned around, his sandalled feet coming up from the underwater sand they had melted into. "I can't do this anymore. You don't know what it's like, you're getting the good end of the double standard." He took a step back, deeper into the waves, when Tyr tried to grasp his shoulder again. "You don't know what it's like! You didn't see what he tried to do me, Tyr, you weren't there when they all laughed at me! You weren't there when they...took me to that fucking witch doctor or whatever the hell and poured that shit down my throat, you don't know what it's like to be treated like this! I thought I was done with this, I can't deal with this now, I can't deal with all the things that are...goddammit, I don't even know what thoughts are mine or not anymore! I'm not Harper, I'm Zay, I'm fucking Zay with the fucking limp and I can't even-"  
  
Then, something amazing happened.  
  
Tyr kissed Harper.  
  
Well, that doesn't really do it justice. One moment he was glowering as Harper vented his frustration and the next he was cupping Harper's cheek with his left hand and encircling Harper's waist with the other arm, and their mouths were infused in something that was not quite romantic but not quite rough, either. Their mouths still locked, Tyr sank to the ground, sitting in the waves as they lapped up gently and pooled around them. There was a little bit of darting with Tyr's tongue, trying to get in to get more of that honey-cake taste, but Harper's jaw was clenched shut and the boy wouldn't budge.  
  
When Tyr finally relented he drew back, but remained holding Harper close to him and cupping his cheek. "You are Seamus Harper." He said softly. Then, a little louder, a little more firmly. "You are Seamus Zelazny Harper. You were born on the planet Earth under the Dragan heel. You served on the Eureka Maru and are currently the engineer for the High Guard Commonwealth Glorious Heritage Andromeda Ascendant. You have shown amazing feats of strength and survival and beaten all the odds when the rest of the universe seemed out to get you. You are a survivor.You are not Zay, you are not a Casiijan slave, and you certainly do not belong to any General Anasazi, or to me. You belong to no one, Harper, but yourself."  
  
There was a moment of silent. Harper stared up at Tyr, wanting to respond, wanting to say something, wanting to thank him for saying that, or even to agree, but he couldn't. He couldn't agree and he couldn't thank him. And the conflicting emotions attached to the feeling of the bigger man's left thumb rubbing soothingly across his lower lip wasn't helping.  
  
Tyr watched the boy's clear blue eyes, made dark and sparkling by the unfettered moonlight, as they meandered uncertainly all over Tyr's face, swimming with changing emotions, before settling on two primary ones.  
  
Doubt. And loneliness.  
  
Tyr was suddenly overcome with the feeling one gets when one finally finds a kindred spirit. So, without really thinking about it, he leaned forward and kissed Harper again.  
  
Harper reciprocated this time, almost too eagerly, wrapping his own frail, small arms around Tyr's neck, and lifting himself up in the water to get a seat on Tyr's lap. The gentle waves pushed him into the bigger man's chest and Harper sighed as Tyr's hands found their way up inside Harper's damp slave garment. He sighed when he laid his head on Tyr's shoulder and Tyr kissed his neck gently, the feeling being not quite unlike tickling and far more pleasurable. Tyr's large hands found their way all around Harper's body, as Harper just sat there and enjoyed it. He needed to be this close to another person, he hadn't had this sort of skin to skin contact in so long and it melted away the anxiety he had been carting around inside of him. He gasped the littlest bit when Tyr began stroking one already taut nipple, rubbing it gently, almost premeditatively.  
  
Everywhere Tyr touched him felt like, well, not like fire, but an embarrassed sort of sweetness, a blush, and Harper was shaking. He leaned up and kissed Tyr back, on the cheek, enjoying the feel of the short trimmed beard scratching against his own soft skin, hugging the older man closer.  
  
And it was felt good, it was good, and it was real, it wasn't like all the other times. Harper sighed as Tyr's hands trailed across his back and belly, it was the first time he was actually touched, the first time he actually felt. He laid his head back down on Tyr's shoulder. Tyr's hands trailed down under the water to Harper's backside.  
  
And suddenly it was bad, and wrong, and Harper's eyes shot open. He pulled back and stared like a frightened animal into the darkness. It was him. It was just him and Tyr, and no one had stepped in to take his place, and everything was becoming wrong and the same as when the capos-  
  
"I'm sorry," He said, softly, his voice breaking. Tyr resisted only a little bit when Harper pushed away from him in the water, almost disappearing when he lost his footing slightly on the soft sand under the water. "I'm so sorry," Harper repeated, his head bowed, as he sloshed up to the shore. He tugged at his now-transparent slave's garment and, head still bowed and still shaking with the familiar fear and shame that had been exorcised for a few brief, brilliant moments, walked quietly off into the woods.  
  
Tyr had no comment. He remained in the water a bit longer and stared up at the stars.  
  
TBC. 


End file.
